In Which Deidara is a Girl
by WynterSky
Summary: Deidara is actually a girl disguised as a boy, and madly in love with Itachi when she's not trying to kill him.  It's less ridiculous than it sounds. Really it is.
1. In Which Hikari Gets a New Job

In Which Deidara is a Girl:

A/N:

1.

I was trying to figure out how to work the pronouns, etc. for this, and finally decided to just use feminine pronouns for Deidara (except when I'm writing from the POV of someone who thinks she's a boy). However, Deidara-as-a-boy is called Deidara, and Deidara-as-a-girl is called Hikari (her full name is Deidara Hikari). This might change depending on how confused I get. Or you get.

2.

This is kind-of sort-of manga compliant up to the Sasuke/Itachi final battle. However I wasn't really bothering to look much up and it happens with the main plot in the background.

3.

I do not believe myself. I just outlined this thing _all the way to the end_. As far as I can tell, there will be 19 or 20 chapters and an epilogue, with some side stories later. This was only intended to be a goofy relief from more serious writing (i.e. Turning Points), but it's taken on a life of its own.

Anyway, on to the story. Any comments or opinions would be most welcome. I hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 1: In Which Hikari Gets a New Job

_Whoever thought up 'love at first sight' didn't have a_ clue_ what they were talking about. 'Hate at first sight' works just as well; maybe even better._

_It started like this:_

Swinging her bare feet over the edge of the tiled roof she was perched on, Deidara grinned in delight as the hot wind from the flames fanned her hair. If anyone had seen her eyes then, they would have thought she was staring at 'Darushi' from one of the romantic dramas she used to watch with her sisters. In her time as a missing-nin, however, she had learned that a good-sized munitions factory blowing up was just as good as a tall, dark and handsome romantic hero. Besides, it was for a good cause!

...Well, a maybe sort-of not-evil cause. But they paid her, so she couldn't complain. And it was fun!

Holding back the urge to fling off the jutsu she was using to disguise her gender, don a furisode, and dance around the absolutely _humongous_ bonfire to the beat of a taiko, Deidara stood up on the roof and took one last long look before deciding it was finally time to leave. She had a safe-blowing contract two towns away for three in the morning and it was already almost one forty-five. Her mother had always taught her to be punctual. (She had also taught her to tell the truth, restrain her pyromania, and not talk while eating, but you can't win them all.)

Just as she was about to jump across the street to get to where she'd left her bird, a discreet cough from behind brought her to a (mentally) screeching halt. She whirled immediately, prepared for a fight, already forming explosive clay in her hands.

"We don't want a battle," one of the two boys standing in the shadow of the chimney said quickly, stepping into the flickering light and holding out his hands in a 'peace' gesture. "We only wish to talk to you."

"Okay," Deidara replied, relaxing just slightly. The redheaded boy didn't look particularly threatening; but then she didn't either. "I'm listening, un. Make it fast, I have to be seventy-five miles away in an hour."

"Very well. Our leader wishes to discuss possible employment. Come to _Les Etoilles de Saveur_ in three days at seven in the evening, if you are amenable. Tell them you're there to meet Pein."

"I'll think about it, un," Deidara replied. She wasn't quite sure what 'amenable' meant, but the rest of what the boy said made pretty good sense (and she wasn't about to say no to free food).

"Thank you," the redhaired boy said politely, before gracefully leaping down into the street below, followed by the other boy, who hadn't moved out of the shadows at all before now; Deidara was only able to get a glimpse of a dark ponytail before he was gone.

Making a note in her mental appointment book to find wherever it was she was supposed to go, she filed the meeting in the back of her mind and set off for a date with a bank vault.

...

_Les Etoilles de Saveur_ was one of those 'foreign' restaurants that had become a bit of a fad in the northern countries. It was also horribly, horribly fancy, and as she approched the opulent facade, Deidara began to worry that they wouldn't let her in. While she took in a lot of money for 'jobs', most of it went for explosives and chocolate milkshakes, so she was currently wearing only a simple wrap vest and pants, both of which were rather the worse for wear.

"I'm here to meet Pein, un!" she announced, with much more confidence than she felt, to the snooty butler-type person who barred her way as soon as she pushed the door open.

Snooty Butler Type stared at her for a long time, from her messy ponytail (which probably still smelled like smoke from the last job) to her dusty bare feet, before stepping out of her way, bowing slightly. "Right this way, sir," he said just a little bit icily, ushering her through the main part of the restaurant to a large booth in the back.

The redhaired boy was already there, sitting across from his ponytailed friend (who looked _much_ better from the front, although the red eyes were a bit freaky) and two other people she didn't recognize: an orange-haired young man with several painful-looking facial piercings and a blue-skinned man who resembled a shark more than anything else. Mr. Snoots (as she had named him mentally) waited until she was seated on the bench next to the redhaired boy before handing her a menu. "Would you like to order now?"

"Uh...yeah, sure, un," Deidara said, looking over the menu for something that wasn't too outlandish. She settled for the'pilaf', whatever that was. It said it had rice in it, so it couldn't be that bad.

"So who are you people anyway?" Deidara asked as Mr. Snoots walked away, reaching over the redhaired boy to grab a roll from the bread basket.

"I am Pein, the leader of Akatsuki," the orange-haired man said. Deidara paid a bit more attention; Akatsuki was the big leagues, and whatever job they'd have for her would probably be difficult. "There are Akasuna no Sasori, Hoshigaki Kisame, and Uchiha Itachi."

Deidara nearly choked on her roll. "_The_ Uchiha Itachi, un?" she sputtered.

"Yes, _'the'_ Uchiha Itachi," Itachi said, looking at her like she was a complete idiot. "There are no other Uchiha. And you shouldn't talk while you're eating."

Deidara ignored this last comment, although she coincidentally kicked him in the shin about two seconds later. It was a bit strange how she ended up kicking him and not Kisame, who was actually taking up most of the room under the table, but she chalked it up to serendipity.

"So what's the job?" she asked, licking the last crumbs from the roll into her hands. "Just so you know, I don't do discreet, so if you're thinking about an assassination or something you should find somebody else, un. Oh, and I draw the line at orphanages."

"Orphanages?" Kisame was the one who asked the question, but it was clear that they were all thinking it (except for Itachi, who was savagely cutting his steak while pretending she didn't exist).

"I happen to like kids, un." This was, in fact, the truth. Her six younger siblings (and another on the way) had not been one of the reasons she left Iwa; in fact, they had been the reason she had almost stayed.

"That aside," Pein cut in, "you seem to have misunderstood our purpose in contacting you."

Deidara looked at him suspiciously but didn't say anything since Mr. Snoots arrived just then with the pilaf.

"We don't have a job for you," Pein continued as Deidara took her first bite, "we want you to join our organization."

Deidara set her fork down with a decisive clink. "No way!" she said firmly. "I work strictly freelance, un."

Pein did not seem fazed by her denial. "Then, as there was no point in our meeting with you, you will pay for the dinner."

Deidara blinked in shock. Pein smirked. Itachi continued eating his (oh-so-expensive-looking) steak and ignoring her entirely.

"Butbutbut I can't afford that, un!" she protested finally.

"Then you agree to join Akatsuki?"

"No! Uh...look, I'll make a deal. If one of you can beat me in a fight, you pay for the dinner and I'll join your little club, okay? And if I win, you pay for the dinner and leave me alone, un."

"That is a satisfactory arrangement," Pein said calmly, turning to his subordinates.

"Not it!" "Not it!" Kisame and Sasori chorused, immediately realizing he was about to ask for a volunteer.

"Itachi?"

Itachi looked up from his efforts to use a vibration jutsu to get at the last bit of steak sauce. He shrugged. "Hn."

Presumably, this meant 'yes'. Pein treated it as such, anyway. "Very good. You will duel immediately after dinner. Is there a suitable location nearby?"

"There's a fifty-foot crater about two miles out of town, will that work?"

"Eminently."

The (heartstoppingly expensive) meal was finished in silence. Deidara found that the pilaf didn't taste nearly as good as it looked and mentally promised herself she would never, ever eat it again, but forced herself to finish it anyway. After all, she _was_ paying for it, sort of.

...

"So, why did you go missing-nin?" Sasori asked as Pein led them briskly out of town. Itachi was behind them with Kisame, still pretending she didn't exist, or at least that she was beneath his notice.

"I ran out of stuff to blow up at home," Deidara growled, wincing as she stepped on a rock. This was only half the reason, but she couldn't explain the whole marriage-contract situation without prompting some questions she didn't want to answer. "Besides, it was boring."

"Ah." Sasori was surprisingly unsurprised by her explanation. Maybe he'd heard that pyromania ran in the family. In any case, the rest of the walk out of town was made without further conversation.

...

"Any rules, un?" Deidara asked as they stood at the edge of the crater.

"The duel will continue until one of you concedes or is incapacitated," Pein said. "Other than that you may use any techniques you like."

"Sounds good, un!" Deidara said cheerily, jumping down into the crater. Itachi was waiting across from her, standing completely motionless; he would make a perfect target. "Ready or not, here I come!" she shouted, flinging a pair of small bombs at him to keep him occupied while she prepared to take to the air. A large bird would take too much time and chakra for this situation, but she quickly improvised a small glider, just big enough to stand on.

Itachi had dodged her bombs surprisingly easily, so she followed up with a larger spread of higher charges as she swooped over him. These were also dodged, and Deidara realized that this would not be a quick win. Bringing her glider up sharply, she avoided a handful of kunai—Itachi's first attack—but nearly lost her balance. Diving down and around, she released several small birds, which would be harder to avoid than simple bombs.

"Katsu!" she shouted, setting the birds off just as Itachi blew a fireball at her glider. She swivelled to avoid it (bending over backwards to keep from falling) but he had led her perfectly and the edge of it just caught a wing.

The one problem with making flying machines out of explosive clay was that they were extremely flammable. Deidara was forced to jump to the ground as the glider spiraled away and detonated against the far side of the crater. Itachi was nowhere to be seen, so either the birds had got him or he was hiding in the smoke. Most likely the former, she decided, but she started to ready a few bombs just in case and _how did he get in front of me and—_

Never having heard of the Mangekyou Sharingan, she didn't know to avoid meeting his eyes, and immediately felt as if she were drowning in blood. For the next (to her) six hours, her most coherent thoughts were _ow ow stupid cheating psycho jerk ow blast it ow ow ow!_

When the pain-induced haze dissipated, she found herself kneeling at the bottom of the crater with Itachi standing in front of her holding out his hand to help her up. "Do you concede?" he asked icily.

Deidara took the proffered hand. "Of course _not, you jerk!"_she snarled furiously, whipping her other fist around in a punch that would have crushed his rib cage, if it had only connected. Unfortunately, her own momentum worked against her. Before she could figure out what happened, Itachi was behind her and had twisted both arms behind her back in such a way that if she tried to move she would end up with a dislocated shoulder. Well, there went her carefree life of midnight bonfires and chocolate milkshakes. "Okay, _now_ I give up."

Itachi, much to her embarrassment, did not let go, instead dragging her out of the crater to where Pein was waiting with the others. "He conceded," he explained calmly.

"I _said _I did, didn't I? Now let go of me, un!"

At a nod from Pein, Itachi let go. "Took you long enough, un," Deidara muttered, rolling her shoulders to relieve the tension.

"You will be Sasori's partner," Pein said. "We will return to Amegakure now. Come." He turned and led the way, Itachi and Kisame directly behind him. Deidara sighed and tagged along next to Sasori.

"So, uh, welcome aboard?" Sasori offered.

"Shut up, un."


	2. In Which an Appendectomy is Performed

Chapter 2: In Which an Appendectomy is Performed

Life in Akatsuki, Deidara decided over the next few months, was really not that bad. It would actually be kind of fun, if it weren't for the 'following someone else's orders' thing and the 'actually a girl but can't let them find out' thing. That last was getting to be a bit of a problem. The Deidara clan had never been known for its tenacious grip on sanity, and the freaky hormone inbalance from overuse of a genderswitch jutsu was not helping matters.

However, the main issue she had with being part of Akatsuki were her 'colleagues':

Sasori was all right, really, for a permanently 15-year-old puppet. Actually, he was the best partner she could have had out of the lot. Since he didn't eat, she could sneak off on her own when they were out on a mission and run around as Hikari for an hour or two. Occasionally, such as when Sasori caught her coming out of the movie theatre (luckily after, rather than before, she changed back to Deidara) after _Yoake o Kowasu,_ otherwise known as the 'Chick Flick of the Year', she could explain this as "being artistic, un!"

Sasori appeared to accept this explanation, or else he was too freaked out to pursue the matter, so she also used this excuse for the Sons of Suna band posters in their shared bedroom, and the gobs of eyeliner she slathered on.

However, explaining to Kakuzu why she was spending both her and Sasori's food allowance was difficult, as she couldn't tell _him_ she was sneaking off to fluffy girly pastry shops (or even _maid cafes_, when she was desperate), artistic merits or not. Her strongest opinion about the official treasurer was that it would be much easier if Akatsuki just kept its money in a piggybank, then everyone could just break it when they wanted money. They'd waste some money on piggybanks but it would be easier than convincing Kakuzu to shell out.

As for Hidan, it was a good thing he didn't know she was a girl; she avoided him as much as possible.

Zetsu was polite, if rather freaky at times, and reclusive enough that she rarely met him.

Kisame was susprisingly nice for a 7-foot shark-man. Unfortunately for him, Deidara immediately associated him with Itachi and therefore detested him with a passion.

Itachi she thought about as little as possible, aside from the occasional mental evisceration (and trap rigged in his room, when she was bored or especially hormonal).

Pein was the stereotypical Evil Mastermind and talked like a thesaurus, but Deidara didn't know much about him other than that since she rarely saw him except when he was giving orders to her and Sasori.

Konan...well. Akatsuki's token kunoichi (who was actually Akatsuki's _other_ kunoichi, but Konan didn't know that) was apparently in denial about the whole 'organization of international criminals who would all kill each other if they weren't working together' situation. That, and the fact that she was prone to random fits of domesticity, meant that occasionally she made them all eat dinner together, which was horribly, excruciatingly awkward.

...

Deidara's first experience with this came about six months after she was 'recruited'. She and Sasori returned from a mission to Suna to find Hidan vaccuming the rock floor and Kakuzu and Kisame setting up the big meeting table in the largish cavern that served as their living room. Konan was presiding, wearing an apron and a dictatorial expression.

"What's this, Sasori, spring cleaning?" Deidara asked, fighting the urge to laugh at Hidan wearing a kerchief to protect his hair from the dust.

"No, 'family dinner'." The puppet-boy's expression turned wistful.

"Oi, Deidara!" Konan shouted over the noise of the vacuum. "Come help set the table!"

"I'm going to work on a new project," Sasori said. "I guess I'll see you later."

"Okay..." Deidara noted the almost imperceptible droop in his shoulders as he walked away and felt rather sorry for him. Not being able to eat must be tough sometimes.

...

Once the meal started, though, she decided Sasori was lucky to have an excuse to stay away. For one thing, she had ended up across from the one person she detested the most, namely, Uchiha Itachi the red-eyed psychopath. For another, there were _three forks! Three!_ at her place, and she didn't have a clue which one did what or why. Konan was a stickler for etiquette, apparently; even that swanky restaurant she tried to avoid thinking about had had the decency to only require one.

She managed to discreetly drop the teeny-tiny one on the floor after the salad course, but that still left her with two. Absently twirling one of them as she waited for the fish to get past Kisame, she had a brilliant idea. Plastering an innocent, vaguely bored smile on her face, she began to spin and flip the fork more and more vigorously, all the while looking everywhere except at Itachi, who was staring at her suspiciously. Eventually, however, he lost interest and started picking at his fish (which smelled wonderful, hopefully Kisame wouldn't take it all). Deidara put in a few more spins just to be sure, then snapped her hand forward, flinging the fork across the table with enough force to skewer Itachi's hand.

...

Itachi blinked as the fork missed his hand by a mere eighth of an inch and impaled itself in his salmon, and immediately directed the Uchiha Death Glare (version 2.0) at the one responsible.

"Ah...oops, un?" the newest member of Akatsuki stammered, quailing under the weight of the Sharingan.

Itachi smirked and jerked the offending object out of the fish, swiveled it around so the prongs were forward, and brought his hand back, preparatory to putting one of the insolent little prat's eyes out. Unfortunately, Konan chose this moment to enter with a fresh platter of rolls and therefore noticed the furor at the far end of the table.

"Itachi!" she snapped. "Put your fork down and eat your fish before it gets cold."

Itachi considered explaining that it wasn't _his_ fork, and he was merely returning it to its rightful owner, but he always chose his battles wisely and backtalking the Leader's girlfriend could in no way be considered wise.

Deidara smirked and stuck one of his hand-tongues out once Konan's back was turned, snatching it back as the blue-haired kunoichi glanced their direction again.

"Itachi, Deidara, you're on dishes tonight."

Deidara's expression turned from smug to horrified and it was Itachi's turn to smirk.

...

Dinner finally over, Itachi immediately stalked off to the spring chamber (Akatsuki headquarters had electricity, powered by gas generators, but running water was limited to the bathrooms), leaving Deidara to carry the dishes in. As Konan had just served a four-course meal to eight people, there were a lot of those. After the third trip, she thought about demanding that Itachi help, but decided that she liked her rapidly deteriorating sanity right where it was, thank you, and antagonizing someone with trippy mind torture techniques was not going to keep it there.

"I'll wash, you dry," Itachi ordered coldly, not deigning to look at her. Deidara took the opportunity to make several nasty faces at his back. He was only a year and a bit older than her, at the most, so what business did he have acting like he was so much better than she was?

...

If it hadn't been for his elite ANBU training, Itachi would have jumped in surprise when Deidara's blue eyes suddenly appeared only a few inches from his own. As it was, he turned on the Uchiha Death Glare while distancing himself as much as possible from the crazy (or possibly suicidal, sneaking up on him like that) Iwa missing-nin without actually moving from his position.

"What makes you so much better than me?" the blonde (in more ways than one, Itachi decided) demanded abruptly.

Itachi debated whether or not to reply, but settled on shutting the fool up once and for all. "Because you're an incompetent idiot who has no business being in this organization."

Deidara had the nerve to pout. "Just because you got a lucky shot with your Chewing-gum thing doesn't mean I'm incompetent!" he protested. "Un!" he added a moment later, as if he had forgotten.

Itachi ignored the comment and shoved the first plate at Deidara's face with a glare that hopefully got across the message that if the nincompoop didn't shut up he would end up with a fish knife somewhere in the vicinity of his spleen. Apparently it did convey that impression, for the blonde snatched the plate without further comment and scuttled away to find a towel. Disregarding Deidara's continued existence, Itachi resumed washing dishes until he heard something that sounded disturbingly like an expensive china plate from an exclusive set being dropped by a egotistical blonde of remarkable stupidity who was about to get stabbed with a fish knife.

He was just beginning to plan where to hide the body when something heavy (also most likely blonde, and a 'someone') landed on his back and he found himself breathing water.

...

As her life flashed before her eyes, Deidara decided that attempting to hack the resident genius' ponytail off with a shard of porcelain was probably the stupidest thing she had ever done. And, since she was not known for doing particularly intelligent things, this was saying something. When she'd smashed the plate, it was with the intention merely to annoy Itachi, but she was so fed up with his stupid freaky eyes and his stupid stuck-up attitude and his stupid pretty face...and his stupid, tempting, currently vulnerable bishie ponytail...

And the next thing she knew, she was wielding a coincidentally perfectly shaped piece of the broken plate and simultaneously trying to both drown Itachi and cut his hair. Unfortunately, she only managed to succeed in the hair-cutting, and not the drowning, before he apparently attempted to perform an appendectomy with a fish knife.

Deidara didn't exactly scream, _per se,_ but she certainly made a very loud noise which signified her opinion that _that bloody well hurt_, at which Kisame burst into the room, Samehada at the ready.

...

Whatever he expected to see, he didn't see it. What he _did_ see was a soaking wet Itachi and Deidara in a somewhat...compromising position. It would have been more compromising if Deidara wasn't holding several inches of Itachi's ponytail (which were no longer attatched to Itachi's head) and Itachi wasn't firmly clutching the handle of a fish knife currently lodged somewhere between Deidara's kidney and his appendix.

Kisame immediately dragged Itachi off of the clearly deranged and suicidal blonde: it wouldn't do to let the Uchiha kill him right after his recruitment. Quickly examining his partner, he concluded that Itachi was unharmed, except for the worst haircut in the history of the Uchiha clan. As for Deidara—well, he'd live, if he didn't try something stupid like that again.

...

Deidara pulled the fish knife out as Kisame escorted Itachi out of the room. Hopefully he'd finished washing it before stabbing her with it; in any case the injury didn't look especially serious. Staggering to her feet, she made her way out of the spring room and down the hall to her room, slowly, as it seemed Itachi had bruised something important to the process of walking when he threw her to the floor.

The door to her room was closed when she arrived at it, but Sasori promptly opened it at her pounding. "Done with dinner already? Usually Konan goes on for...why are you all wet? Is that blood? Um...are you okay?"

Deidara staggered into the room and collapsed onto the bed. "I'm fine," she said. "Now go away, or I'll blast you through the wall, un!" she added cheerily.

Sasori took in her maniacal smile and too-wide eyes and wisely fled.

Sighing as she flopped into a supine position, Deidara rapidly formed four rabbit seals, followed by a bird. There was a warm tingling sensation and her vision filled with golden sparkles—the sparkles actually didn't have any particular purpose, but apparently the original inventor of the Deidara Clan Girls-Only (No Boys Allowed) Genderswitch Technique had thought it would 'look pretty'.

...

As the pretty sparkles dissipated Hikari saw with relief that while she'd regained her hourglass figure (and retained her clothes, although they didn't fit properly at the moment), she'd lost the stab wound next to her appendix. She had discovered some time ago that switching back and forth could cancel out an injury, but had never tried it on anything this serious before. This time, it had had the added benefit of drying her off as well. Standing up and stretching in front of the mirror to make sure the injury was really gone (it was) she flipped her now much longer hair over her shoulder and grabbed a brush off the nightstand. Hopefully she would have time to get all the tangles out before she had to change back.

Alas, it was not to be. At the soft knock, Hikari dashed into the bathroom as she formed seals, slamming the door just before Sasori entered the room.

...

"Deidara?" Sasori called timidly. He could sense a massive pulse of chakra coming from the vicinity of the bathroom, which could possibly have been Deidara healing himself, but he assumed a defensive position just in case it was Deidara preparing to blast him into little bits. "Deidara?" he called again, louder.

The bathroom door banged open. "What, un?" Deidara snarled, leaning against the doorframe.

"Peinwantstoseeyourightaway," Sasori said quickly, and ducked out of the way as Deidara stalked past him.

...

The aftermath of the meeting with Pein was that, as 'But he was _looking_ at me, un!' was not considered sufficient provocation, even when the Sharingan was involved, the Appendectomy incident was all Deidara's fault. This meant that she would be paying for a replacement plate, which would mean that she would be running extra missions, since the one she had chosen to break was part of an exclusive set that was no longer being made.

Luckily Sasori had pity on her and came along to help on most of the missions, but it still took them several weeks to gather the money, plus the time it took to find the right set on the black market. At least it meant she didn't have to worry about running into Itachi.

A/N:

This chapter was rather difficult, but I think it turned out okay. I was listening to 'What is this Feeling' from Wicked while writing it; it sums up their current opinion of each other rather well. The next chapter will be rather short, as it was intended to be part of this chapter, but the first half got so long that I had to split it.


	3. In Which Sasori is Traumatized

Chapter 3: In Which Sasori is Traumatized

Some time had passed, and it was after a particularly dirty mission that Deidara staggered into their room, realized Sasori was nowhere to be seen, and decided to have the longest, pinkest, floral-scented-est bubble-bath in the history of Akatsuki.

...

Several hours later, Sasori staggered into their room after a particularly intense puppet-testing session. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he moaned inwardly. He wasn't exactly sure how he had ended up with paint in his hair, but he had, and it was already dry. There was nothing for it but to cut it off.

He headed for the bathroom but found it closed; Deidara was apparently inside, as he could sense his chakra signature, but there was an odd edge to it, similar to when he had been healing himself after the Appendectomy Incident.

"Deidara?" Sasori called, but the sound of the hairdryer running drowned him out and there was no reply from the bathroom. "Deidara!" he tried again, knocking on the door. Still no reply. Well, he wasn't about to stand about with paint in his hair all day. Shoving the door open, he burst into the room—and froze in shock.

"Hello Sasori," said the blonde girl (!) who was currently sitting on the bathroom floor and reaching as far back as she could to dry her immensely long hair, which was draped over the back of a chair. "Can you close the door?" she asked, putting the hairdryer down and tying her bathrobe a little more securely. "You're letting all the cold air in."

Sasori closed the door and leaned against it for support, gaping in disbelief. "You're a...a...a...you know?"

"Well of course!"

"But where's Deidara?" Sasori asked. Something was desperately trying to click in his brain but it just wasn't working.

Before Sasori could react, the girl had moved with surprising speed, grabbed his shirt, pinned him against the door, and was generally being surprisingly intimidating for someone shorter than he was. "Right here, silly!" she said in a terrifyingly cheerful tone. "And if you don't promise not to tell anybody about it," she continued with an angelic smile, "I'll blast you into little bits and then vacuum and nobody will ever know a thing! So promise?"

"I promise?" Sasori said meekly.

"Oh good," girl-Deidara said, letting go of his shirt. "I actually kind of like you, so I didn't want to blow you up or anything and so...are you okay? You don't look so good."

"Hnnnnnnngh," Sasori agreed, sliding to the floor. "When did this happen?"

"When did what?"

"The..." he waved a hand at the curves which could still be distinguished from under the bathrobe. "That. Did somebody put a jutsu on you? You went on a lot of dangerous missions after the plate thing."

...

Hikari sighed as she tried to figure out how to explain things. "Nonono, you're all backwards," she said finally.

"What?"

"This is what I _really_ look like. The other one is a jutsu. Look, I'll show you." Five seals and copious amounts of sparkles later, her body had changed shape, her hair had shortened, and she was taller than Sasori again. "See?" she said, repeating the seals to reverse the process.

"I am capable of visual perception," Sasori replied mechanically. "So...you're actually a girl?"

"Yes."

"And you have concealed that for more than two years?"

"Yes, and it's _horrible!_" Hikari wailed, tugging at her bangs. "It's like, I don't know, drugs or something! I'm sneaking around in candy stores and maid cafes trying to get my girly fix! Sometimes I think I'm two different people! I'm probably going insane!"

"I can see that," Sasori said, scooting away from her until he bumped into the door again. "I assume Deidara isn't your real name then?"

"Oh, it is, it's just my clan name. My given name's Hikari. Now go away while I get dressed, okay?" she quickly formed the seals which Sasori had now memorized and he watched through the golden sparkles in fascination as her form shifted.

"But you're not a girl right now..."

"Go away! Go on, shooshooshoo!" She practically shoved Sasori out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

He was halfway to the hall when he realized that Deidara (Hikari?) hadn't said 'un' once, and he still hadn't got the dried paint out of his hair.

A/N:

See? Short. I couldn't quite combine it with the previous or following chapter, and couldn't really make it much longer than this. I hope the timeskip wasn't too sudden. Next we get back to Itachi!


	4. In Which Itachi is in Distress

A/N: Yay for pronounal confusion! Also lots of dialogue...oh well. Enjoy! After this I'm going to concentrate on Turning Points for a while.

And before I forget like I did on the last three chapters: I don't own Naruto. I wish I did, but I don't think I could afford the ramen.

Chapter 4: In Which Itachi is in Distress

All in all, Sasori took the revelation that his annoying partner was a girl surprisingly well. This could probably be explained by the fact that, frankly, Hikari made a better girl than she did a boy, but Sasori didn't dare actually say that. Be that as it was, after that she could go on all her long-distance missions as a girl, which did something, at least, for her mental state and, thereby, Sasori's peace of mind. It also made some of the missions a lot easier, as a innocent girl and her little brother (Sasori _hated_ being the little brother) could get all sorts of places that two mildly suspicious boys could not.

...

After several weeks out in Suna, where they had just completed a rather unique mission involving seventeen albino gerbils (Hikari could _swear_ Konan was still angry about the plate), they arrived back at base hot, dusty and tired, only to find that the running water was cut off. Deidara headed for the spring room, saying he was going to dump a bucket of water over his head, and Sasori headed for their room to work on his thermal regulatory system.

Standing in the middle of the middle of the spring room soaking wet certainly brought back a lot of memories—mostly horribly painful ones involving a psychotic red-eyed jerk with a penchant for fish knife appendectomies. She considered releasing the DCGO(NBA)GT, and in fact formed the first two rabbit seals, but stopped when Kisame's bursting into the room caused her to decide that the aforementioned was probably not a very good idea.

"Fancy meeting you here," Deidara said as Kisame pushed past her and knelt by the pool to splash water on his face. "Now all we need is Itachi and a fish knife and we'll have reconstructed the scene of the—"

"Is Pein here?" Kisame interrupted.

"No, but Konan is and she gave us the worst—"

The door slammed behind Kisame.

"—mission ever but I guess you don't really care, do you?" Deidara finished, twisting the water out of her hair. Since it was short at the moment, this actually worked fairly efficiently. Wondering what it was all about but too tired to really care, she flicked her bangs out of her face and headed for her room.

Which was also Sasori's room, she remembered almost too late as she just managed not to impale her foot on a lethal-looking screw. "What _are_ you doing?" she asked, looking around the room. "Your stuff is all over my bed—I mean," she ammended quickly as she noted Sasori's open rib cage, "_you_ are all over my bed. Get off."

"I'm working on it," Sasori protested, intent on the tiny screw he was fastening. "Zetsu was just in here. Konan has another mission for us."

"Awwww, but we just got back!" Deidara pouted.

"Apparently it's important."

"So were the gerbils. Well, if she's that set on driving me insane..."

"More like driving you to quit."

"Ha! Like I'd give her the satisfaction. I'll just go crazy, it's more fun. You put yourself together while I get something dry on and then we'll go see what horrible ordeal she wants to put us through this time."

...

"You want us to do _what! Un!_"

Konan moaned, running her hands through her hair. It seems the worst situations always _had_ to happen when she was in charge, and Deidara wasn't about to make this any easier for her. Brat.

"Uchiha Itachi has been captured," she repeated with a sigh. "You and Sasori are the only team currently at the base, therefore I am assigning you to rescue him."

"Can't the jerk rescue himself?"

Oh, that was it. As soon as he and Sasori got back, Deidara was going on the utter longest, filthiest, most humiliating mission she could find. Solo. "As I have said _four times now_," she snapped icily, "No. He. Can't. Kisame reported that he was probably injured in a fall as they were leaving Konoha."

"What were they doing in Konoha in the first place, un?"

"I don't know, Pein sent them before he left! Now get a move on!"

"Oi, why can't Kisame go?" Deidara asked as he was halfway out the door. "Or Zetsu? Or—_waaaagh!_"

Sasori shoved him into the hall, slamming the office door just as several paper shuriken embedded themselves in it. There were no further disturbances and Konan decided that this would be a very good time to have tea.

...

"Are we there yet, un?" Deidara whined, staring at the unbroken sea of trees below as she fiddled with her ring.

"No," Sasori repeated for approximately the five thousand, two hundred and seventy-eighth time in the last two days.

Moaning in despair, Deidara flopped down on the bird's back. "This is worse than the gerbils. I didn't think Konan could _find_ anything worse than the gerbils."

"There's a bright side to everything," Sasori pointed out as he examined the map. "We should be there in about three hours. Does that make you feel any better?"

"Nooo...hey, maybe if we play our cards right, Itachi'll be 'killed while attempting to escape!'"

"When Konan sent us to bring him back, I'm fairly sure she meant _alive_," Sasori said firmly.

Deidara sighed despondently, then perked up again a few seconds later. "Hey, there's a cloud that looks like a bunny rabbit!"

Sasori would never understand girls.

...

"Explain to me again why I'm going this?" Deidara whispered into the radio clipped to her collar. Her fingers were getting a cramp from clinging to the rough tiles of the roof, and the blood was rushing to her head as she leaned precariously over the edge to see into the window.

"I need to know when the Hokage returns to their office so I can make a distraction so you can get in," Sasori whispered back.

"Why can't I just sneak in and get the dumb files now?"

"Because then the Hokage might come back."

"Whatever, un...hey, somebody's coming in!"

Deidara blew her bangs out of her face so she could see better. There were three people entering the office: a Konoha jounin with silver hair and a book held in front of his face, a genin kunoichi with bright pink hair, and behind them...

"Hey Sasori, are you still there?"

"Yes, should I go now?"

"No, I've got a better idea. Meet me on the roof of the market across the street from the Hokage Tower."

...

"Okay, so what's your brilliant plan?" Sasori asked. "We're far too exposed here, we could be spotted any minute."

"Well, cast a genjutsu or something. Did you know the Hokage's a woman?" Hikari began eagerly, removing her cloak and forming the seals to shift into a girl.

"No...what are you getting at?"

"Okay, so she's blonde, see, and our, uh,"—she motioned vaguely around her torso—"figures are similar, so if we can just knock her out, I could pretend to be her and order Itachi to be brought up for questioning and then we can get away without anybody suspecting a thing! And then we can push Itachi off the bird over the desert and tell Konan it was an accident!"

Sasori sighed. "Okay, first half: good. Second half: not so good. Is she alone in the office?"

Pulling her bangs aside, Hikari looked through her scope. "No...there, they're leaving. Looks like she gave them a mission or something. Are you sure we can't ditch Itachi in the desert?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Does she have any food on her desk?" Sasori asked, rummaging through his pockets. He always had a wide assortment of poisons and drugs when he went out on missions, and he was sure he had something to suit this situation.

"No, but there's a bottle of sake."

"Perfect." Sasori produced a small summoning scroll and flicked it open to reveal a near-perfect replica of a centipede. Fastening the vial he had selected to its back with chakra strings, he began to maneuver it down a drain pipe and across the street, heading for the office window. "Watch it through your scope and tell me when it's over the bottle."

...

Five minutes later, the centipede was clinging to the ceiling of the Hokage's office. Under Hikari's direction, Sasori inched it from side to side until in was perfectly lined up with the mouth of the sake bottle. Carefully, Sasori pulled on the chakra string that would open the vial, glad it was a flip-top kind so there was no lid to fall to the floor and give them away.

"Hurry up!" Hikari whispered. "I think she's about to grab it!"

"Just finished," Sasori replied as he gingerly detatched the chakra strings from the puppet; It was realistic enough that he could leave it on the ceiling for now.

"She's drinking it!" Hikari reported.

"Okay, then ten...nine...eight..." Right on schedule, Tsunade slumped unconscious over the desk and the two Akatsuki vaulted across the street.

As soon as they were inside, Hikari lowered the curtains while Sasori started going through the desk. Opening a closet full of abandoned scrolls and equipment, she dragged the Hokage's inert body inside. "Hey, Sasori!"

Sasori looked up just in time for a flack vest to hit him in the face. A slightly dented Konoha headband followed it. "Put those on so that I can open the curtains once I've changed clothes with her."

"All right...wait, once you've _what?_"

"I said I was going to impersonate her, didn't I? Now turn around, I can't get this closet to shut all the way."

Sasori immediately became intently focused on the contents of Tsunade's desk.

...

Being in prison was horribly boring. In fact, the only thing Itachi could think of that was more boring than being in prison was being in prison while_blind_. This, coincidentally enough, happened to be exactly his situation at the moment. Sighing, he shifted position slightly; it was not much of an improvement. He had calculated that the chains holding him to the wall allowed him enough freedom of movement for 5,648 possible different sitting positions. He was currently on Position #1,174. Most of them had been approximately the same degree of uncomfortable, but some of them were worse, to add some variety.

Even watching paint dry would be better than this. Actually, seeing _anything _would be better than this. He could only hope that Konoha's new Hokage would get a move on and interrogate him or something before he went insane like Deidara.

Stupid blonde. This had to be his fault somehow.

He was just shifting to Position #1,175 when he heard footsteps coming down the hall outside.

...

Sasori inched down the hall ceiling, following the two chuunin Hikari had sent to fetch Itachi. The news that the Uchiha had been blinded was rather worrying, as it meant that Sasori and Hikari would have to take on most of Konoha alone, while dragging a vulnerable dead weight (not that Sasori would ever say that out loud, but it was true for the moment). However, for now Hikari's deception was working perfectly, so perhaps they wouldn't need to fight.

The genjutsu disguising Sasori was strong enough to keep him concealed from almost anything besides the Sharingan or Byakugan, but he flattened against the ceiling tiles instinctively as one of the chuunin looked up. After a tense few seconds, the guard shrugged and continued down the hall, and Sasori brushed the spider webs off his face. One of the benefits of converting himself into a puppet was that he never had to worry about an inopportune sneeze giving him away. One of the disadvantages of converting himself into a puppet was that he _couldn't_ sneeze to get rid of the small spider which had decided to take up residence inside his left nostril.

Finally, he managed to dislodge the pesky creature, looking up just in time to see the two chuunin disappearing through a heavy-looking door. Scurrying down the ceiling, he reached the doorway just as the door shut with a clang that proved it was indeed very heavy.

A quick scan of the area revealed that there were no other shinobi nearby, and Sasori risked dropping to the floor to examine the door to the high-security area. Unfortunately for him, it had a chakra lock, which he was of course not keyed into and would therefore give away his presence if he attempted any tampering. He would just have to wait and hope they came back out the same door they came in.

...

Hikari sighed and drummed her fingers on the rosewood desk. After ordering the two chuunin to bring Uchiha Itachi to her office (they hadn't appeared even remotely suspicious, but then they hadn't exactly been looking at her face), she had rearranged everything on the desk, including the empty sake bottle, three times. There was nothing else to do in the room, except perhaps paperwork, but she didn't have a clue where to start there. Seriously, this was the dumbest job ever.

Stupid Itachi. This was all his fault. Why couldn't he have been a gerbil?

Disinterestedly, she picked up the top piece of paper in the very large pile to her left and read it. It was a D-rank mission request for a babysitter. Hadn't there been a list of genin teams somewhere on the desk?

A quick glance around revealed the list shoved under the sake bottle. She found a pencil in one of the drawers and quickly began to fill out the form. It was something to do, at least. Hopefully 'Team 9' was good with kids. Lee...Neji...and Tenten. The young kunoichi's picture brought a flood of nostalgia. Her eager, determined expression in the ID photo was just like Airi and Aimi's after their graduation to genin.

_Maybe paperwork isn't so bad after all,_ she thought, stamping the mission form firmly with Tsunade's seal and putting it in the box marked 'out'._Finally something to do! _She began to hum cheerfully as she picked up the next form. Hatake Kakashi, jounin-sensei, was requesting a raise because his genin team was 'a messed-up love triangle' and 'he never got any time to read anymore so he was five books behind in Icha Icha' because 'they actually wanted him to arrive on time for things'.

Well, so much for paperwork. There was another form with Hatake's name on it beneath the one she was holding, but she ignored it.

...

There were five doors leading down to the high-security level where Itachi was. So far, the owners of the footsteps had opened four, and did not seem inclined to open the fifth. He was trying to calculate the probability of Position #1,176 being any better than Position #1,175 when the fifth door suddenly banged open, and he jumped at the sudden loud noise. Being blind took a lot of getting used to.

"Door's stuck," grumbled a voice from outside; not one Itachi recognized, however. Either they had changed the guards or they were finally going to move him somewhere else. "Don't they ever oil these hinges?"

"It makes it harder for a prisoner to escape without being detected," said another voice as keys rattled in the lock on the cell door. "Of course," the second voice added, "if the guards can't get in, that isn't much good either..."

Itachi was more prepared this time, but he still jumped just a little bit when the door finally burst open and slammed against the opposite wall. "Let's go, Uchiha," said one of the voices, approaching to unlock the chains.

"Where to?" Itachi asked as he was pulled to his feet. Predictably, he didn't receive an answer. It was a relief to get a chance to move properly again, but he would have felt better about it if he knew where he would end up.

...

Hikari looked up at a knock on the office door. _Finally!_ she thought. _Took Sasori long enough._ "Come in!" she called.

"Yosh!" a green blur shouted, bursting into the room. "Hokage-sama, we have come to report the Most Youthful Success of our last mission!"

This wasn't Sasori, Hikari decided, leaning back in her chair so the green spandex-wearing genin wouldn't be rubbing noses with her. "Uh...sure?" Now that he was holding still, she could almost put a name to his face; she'd seen his picture in one of the files.

"Lee, get off the desk!" another genin shouted from the doorway. Hikari could see enough past Lee's face to ascertain that this one was a girl with a very distinctive updo. This must be Team 9.

"Hokage-sama," the third member of the team began, edging past Tenten as Lee dropped back to the floor (much to Hikari's relief), "we would like to request—" suddenly he paused, frowning, as his eyes narrowed and the veins surrounding them began to stand out. Hikari tensed immediately. She had enough experience with doujutsu from Itachi to know that when freaky things happened with people's eyes it was a Very Bad Sign. "Who are you and why are you impersonating the Hokage?"

"Neji, what are you—" Tenten began, but he cut her off.

"Who are you and why are you impersonating the Hokage?" Neji repeated, leaning threateningly over the desk..

...

Itachi flattened against the wall as the second of the Chuunin fell. He was not a coward, but he could hardly be very effective in his current state and it wouldn't do anyone trying to rescue him any good if he went and got in the way.

"Right, that's that," said a familiar voice.

"Sasori?"

"The same. Let's go."

They headed for the upper levels at a run. On the way, Sasori explained that they would meet Deidara at the Hokage's office and then get away on his bird. Itachi didn't much want to meet Deidara, especially in his current state, but apparently it could not be helped. He had always known Konoha well, but after six years and who-knows-how-many remodels, the Hokage tower was completely unfamiliar to him, and he found himself allowing Sasori to drag him along.

Suddenly Sasori froze, pulling Itachi to a halt. Faintly, Itachi could hear the crackle of a radio.

_"Who are you and why are you impersonating the Hokage?"_

In front of him, Sasori hissed in frustration.

_"None of your business, and nefarious purposes, of course, you idiot,"_ Deidara's voice said, blurred by static. It sounded unusually high-pitched, but then the miniature radios Akatsuki used did all kinds of strange things during a transmission. _"In fact,"_ it continued, _"I was _just leaving._"_

There was a static-fuzzed crashing sound, and the radio went silent.

"Change of plan," Sasori said immediately. "We'll get to the bird ourselves; hopefully Deidara will meet us there."

Itachi fervently hoped he wouldn't.

...

Neji fell backwards as Hikari toppled the desk, but she still had his two teammates to deal with. Tenten's barrages of weaponry she could avoid, but the spandex boy was just too fast and she had never been good at close-range fighting. Unprocessed paperwork filled the air as she ducked blow after blow, trying to gain enough space to set off a charge without being caught in the blast herself.

Dodging a series of roundhouse kicks from Lee and an array of shuriken from Tenten, she edged gradually towards the window. Finally, she felt the cool glass against her palms and formed a pair of seals, half-falling, half-leaping out the window as it blasted outward. The genin followed her, but after a split-second delay, which was quite enough to give Hikari a head start.

"Sasori, where are you?" she whispered into the transceiver as she turned a corner. It was nearing sundown and, while the streets appeared deserted, she knew that regular ninja patrols were bound to begin soon.

"We're at the bird. What happened?"

"Just a bit of a misunderstanding," Hikari replied, ducking into an alley and quickly performing five seals. This meant that the Hokage's tunic no longer fit her, but her Akatsuki cloak would disguise that as soon as she retrieved it. Since the transformation also adjusted her chakra signature, pursuit was no longer the largest of her worries. "You take off, I'll be there in a minute."

Now where _had_ she left the cloak? Kakuzu would be furious if he had to pay for another one.

...

"We're nearly outside the walls," Sasori reported.

And no sign of Deidara. Perfect: if the blonde saw him like this Itachi would _never_ hear the end of it.

Suddenly the bird dipped and bucked, and Itachi grabbed instinctively for the nearest solid object.

"Why Itachi, I never took you for the clingy type, un!"

Itachi would _never_ hear the end of it.

...

[A/N: Not sure about the ending, but I like the rest of it, especially the little cameo from Team 9. Lee's actually one of my favorite characters: he's such a cute little dork!]


	5. In Which Itachi gets a Surprise

[A/N: Great. Now I'm wondering what it would be like if _Itachi_ were a girl. It could either be comedy gold or really, really angsty...

And you should know this by now, but I don't own Naruto.]

Chapter 5: In Which Itachi gets a Surprise

"You know, Itachi's actually really cute, close up." Deidara giggled dreamily, and was she _hugging_ her pillow? "I'm glad we didn't dump him in the desert."

"What?" Sasori gasped, closing his book in surprise. While he didn't need to sleep, he usually lay in bed reading all night because it annoyed everyone else if he prowled through the base.

"I said, Itachi's—"

"No, I mean, what brought this on? I thought you hated him!"

Deidara waved a hand dismissively. "That was when he was stabbing me with a fish knife and doing the freaky eye thing. I mean, did you _see_ his eyelashes?"

If this was what Sasori was missing out on when he converted himself into a puppet, he would do it again in a heartbeat.

"B-by the way," he said in a desperate attempt to change the subject, "I'll be going out on a solo mission tomorrow."

Almost before he could register the movement, Deidara bounded onto his bed and flung her arms around his neck in a grip that would have choked anything that had a trachea. "You can't!" she wailed in the most piteous tone she could muster with her currently masculine vocal cords. "I'll be all _alone!_"

By _alone, _Sasori knew, she meant 'stuck as a boy with her sanity rapidly decreasing again'. Whether Deidara knew she meant this or not he wasn't quite sure. "It'll be fine, okay?" he said reassuringly, endeavoring to disentangle himself from her stranglehold. "I'll bring you back some chocolate or something, and I'll set up some chakra locks on the door so you can do whatever you want in here without anybody...walking in on you. Besides, Itachi and Kisame are gone trying to find a healer to fix his eyes so you won't have to worry about him. Now, would you kindly let go of me?"

Deidara pouted but slunk off to her own bed, to Sasori's great relief. He should have listened to his grandmother when she tried to explain how girls worked.

...

"So, what are you going to do now that you can see again after almost a month?" Kisame asked as they waited for the barrier surrounding the base to recognize them.

"Kill the blonde," Itachi said icily.

"That might not be the best idea, Pein thinks he's useful..." Even though he was the only one allowed to disagree openly with Itachi, Kisame tried to do it as carefully as possible.

"Then I'm sure I can find something equally painful," Itachi retorted as the barrier dissipated, revealing the suitably ominous silhouette of the Akatsuki headquarters. This was really rather unnecessary, as the members of Akatsuki were the only ones who could see it, but Pein was nothing if not thorough. "Where are Pein and Konan? I wish to make a report," he demanded, entering the living room.

"They went out to get Konan some hair dye," Zetsu reported as he sprayed one of the household plants. "**Not the best idea, leaving us unsupervised like this.**"

Itachi quite agreed; this gave him the perfect opportunity to arrange an unfortunate accident. "And Deidara?"

"Left to work on some 'performance art'," Kakuzu said, deftly mending a jagged tear in Hidan's cloak. He had long since given up on getting the stains out but still persisted in keeping it in one piece.

"Good thing too," Hidan added. "Brat's been even crazier than usual lately. I just missed setting off seventeen bombs when I got out of bed this morning."

"**Clearly he got up on the wrong side of the bed.**"

Hidan was about to retort with extreme prejudice when a small bird fluttered through the doorway. Immediately, everyone dove behind the couch except for Itachi and Kisame, who followed a few seconds later when they realized that sparrows were not usually white and clay-textured. After a few endearing chirps and nods, the bird exploded, along with the television, several couch cushions, and one of Konan's teapots which had been adorning the coffee table.

As the dust settled, the five deadly S-ranked missing-nin peeked out from behind the couch, only to duck back as several shards of porcelain flew by and shattered against the wall behind. Itachi didn't duck quite fast enough, and one of the sharp pieces took some of his bangs with it. This was going too far—He'd only just recovered from Deidara's last assault on his hair.

"**The television's gone,**" Zetsu bemoaned after Deidara had stalked back to his room and it was safe to emerge. "**It was the only thing keeping me sane.**" If true, it had not been doing a very good job of it, but nobody wanted to say that.

"Clearly," Itachi announced, "Deidara is plotting against us. Someone must do something about it."

"That someone being you?" Kisame inquired astutely.

"Of course," Itachi replied. His fiendish plan was working perfectly!

"Well, nice knowing you **except not,**" he heard Zetsu say as he headed up the stairs towards Deidara and Sasori's room. He decided he could deal with that later after settling accounts with Deidara.

...

There were several chakra locks holding Deidara's door shut—these were clearly Sasori's work, the blonde was far too clumsy for such delicate constructions. It took him some time to undo them all without putting out large quantities of chakra or noise which would be noticed from inside, but last one finally fell free. Silently pushing the door open, he slipped inside, and nearly died of shock on the spot.

The _entire room_ was pink. Not just sort-of pink, but fire engine pink. That is, if fire engines _were_ pink. As his eyes were completely dazzled by the utter overwhelming pinkness, he had trouble finding Deidara until the...blond girl?...currently occupying Deidara's bed waved in his general direction.

"Hey Sasori," she said. "Just put the chocolate on the dresser, okay? I need you to help me with my hair; the scissors are on the nightstand."

Bewildered but deciding it would be best to play along, Itachi activated the Sharingan (the pink was just a genjutsu, thank all the Kami) and examined the interloper. If it weren't for the fact that it was a girl, all the signs pointed to its being Deidara...but Deidara was most unquestionably _not a girl. _Although come to think of it, there was a strange edge to his chakra at times, as if he was masking something. Not to mention the fact that it would explain some of the blond's idiosyncrasies. Unfortunately, while most of the pink had dispelled, the frilly sheets and fluffy bedjacket she was wearing had remained, and seemed all the brighter for it.

"The scissors, Sasori, do you mind? Just cut it where it crosses the headboard."

Apparently, Deidara (Itachi was sure it _must_ be Deidara by this time, there really wasn't any other explanation that he wanted to think about) hadn't yet realized anything was wrong, as she couldn't see him due to the pink silk eyemask she was wearing. Concluding that it would be best to get as much information as possible before confronting her, Itachi retrieved the scissors and started cutting Deidara's hair, which had been neatly gathered up so that a few inches fell over the headboard.

"Such a shame," Deidara sighed as he made the first snips. "But it does get in the way, and there's only so many ways I can put it up. Sis would be furious, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her, ne?"

She went on to bemoan the ineligibility of the guys she was stuck with, the shameful lack of chocolate milkshakes, and relate her latest escapade at a maid cafe, but Itachi mostly tuned this out (although he fully agreed with her desire to splatter Hidan over a large percentage of the lair) until his name came up.

"And he'd be _perfect_ if it weren't for the stabbing thing. I'm almost sorry I set those bombs in his room; maybe he won't be there when they go off. Still, he has it coming. It's like he doesn't even know I exist, and then he turns around and stabs me with a fish knife. And I know what you're going to say, and that's a _totally_ valid reason to hold a grudge."

Itachi had heard enough. Firmly gathering a fistful of Deidara's surprisingly thick blond hair, he jerked her head around so she was facing him. "Now, if you would care to explain this..."

Deidara pushed up the eyemask and blinked at him with wide, innocent blue eyes. "Explain what?" she asked, pulling the facings of her bedjacket together over her décolletage.

...

The series of small explosions coming from the vicinity of Deidara's bedroom did not attract much attention from the other Akatsuki members, but the distinctly feminine shrieks following did.

_"Ow! Let go of my hair, jerk! Un!"_

"What the...**well, that explains a lot,**" Zetsu said as Itachi and what must be Deidara appeared on the stairs.

Hidan wolf-whistled as Itachi dragged the girl into the living room, garnering a furious glare and a rude gesture from her hand-tongues. Kakuzu and Kisame just stared.

"Colleagues," Itachi announced, "There is a spy in our midst."

"I'm not a spy!" Deidara protested, but Itachi ignored her.

"This matter must be resolved as quickly as possible," Itachi continued. "What are we to do?"

"I could think of a few things," Hidan said, fingering his scythe with a predatory smirk. Itachi opened his mouth to reply, but suddenly sank to the floor with a gasp, releasing Deidara's hair in order to clutch at his bleeding side. Now free, Deidara flung the kunai she'd stabbed Itachi with at Hidan and ran for the door.

"Want to see what I was working on?" she asked tauntingly, pausing in the entry. "I'll show you: it's called _Oshichi! _Katsu!"

"That really didn't have much effect," Kisame remarked after they had come out of hiding (again). "What's an _Oshichi_?"

"A character from a play," Zetsu explained. "**She burned down her house so she could be with her boyfriend. It was so romantic.**"

There was a muffled crack from up above, and a few chips of rock began to fall into the shattered remains of the living room.

"That was the ceiling, wasn't it?"

...

When Pein, Konan, and Sasori (who had stopped for Hikari's chocolate at the same store the Akatsuki leaders were at) got to the top of the hill across from the base, they stopped and stared in horror.

"My secret lair," Pein gasped, surveying the smoking wreckage.

"My fine china!" Konan shrieked.

"My puppets!" Sasori moaned.

In their hurry to get to the scene of the disaster, they beat the All-Shinobi hundred-yard record, a feat made even more impressive by the fact that Konan was wearing stilleto heels. (She and Pein didn't get out very often.) The fact that they were running downhill helped.

"What happened?" Konan panted, running up to the remaining members of Akatsuki.

"Deidara happened," Kisame replied dryly, not looking up from bandaging the stab wound in Itachi's side.

"I'll kill him," Konan growled menacingly. "I'll slice him to pieces! And then I'll resurrect him with Edo Tensei and do it again!"

"**You might have some trouble with that.**"

"Huh?"

"**He's a she.**"

"Deidara's a _whaaaat?_"

[A/N: And the real fun begins! Poor Hikari-chan's been neglected lately, but I had to rework my outline a bit after I realized I'd made a mistake on it. There's a bit of whiplash trying to work on this after Turning Points, as well...going from sweet, protective Itachi over there to snarky, devious Itachi over here is kind of hard, not to mention the difference in writing style. Finally managed to get out of my rut, though, and I think it'll pick up from now on.]


	6. In Which a Bargain is Made

[A/N: Wow, updates to two stories in one night! I'm really on a roll! Besides this, I finally got Timelines started, yay! And, before you read this chapter, I would like to point out that Hikari has...mental issues, so if she contradicts herself a few times, it's totally not my fault. Un.]

Chapter 6: In Which A Bargain is Made

After as much as possible had been salvaged from the remains of the secret lair and a decent funeral had been held for Konan's Noritake and Royal Doulton tea-sets, Akatsuki settled down for a council of war. Unfortunately for Itachi, he was unconscious through most of it, or things might have gone a bit differently.

Sasori and Pein managed to convince Konan that subjecting Hikari to the Death of Ten Thousand Paper Cuts would be (literal) overkill, after some difficulty and numerous promises of new fine china. Kakuzu didn't care as long as she paid for a new lair, and half of Zetsu was in full support as soon as Sasori convinced him that Hikari liked flowers. Nobody listened to Hidan anyway, so the conclusion was that Hikari was still considered a member of Akatsuki, contingent on her being convinced to return, or dragged back, depending on the circumstances. This settled, Pein conferred on Sasori the mission of finding her.

...

Since everyone had been otherwise occupied at the time of Hikari's flight, the most he could figure out was that she had gone 'thataway' which seemed to be vaguely north-north-east-ish. Luckily, once he started in this direction, there was a fairly clear path of smoking craters to follow. A day and a half later, these led him to a Dairy Queen just within the border of Konoha.

Cautiously approaching the building, Sasori slowly edged inside. It wasn't difficult to spot Hikari; her long blond hair was the most noticeable thing in the room (even so, that didn't stop people from tripping over it, Sasori noted). At the moment, she was slumped mopily over a table, sipping distractedly at a chocolate milkshake. This must have been going on for some time, as there were eight empty plastic cups surrounding her. Deciding that, judging by the amount of chocolate she had injested, Hikari must be in a better mood by now, Sasori walked up behind her.

"Hello," he said, and quickly jumped back to avoid being hit by Hikari's chair as she bolted up and whirled around.

"_Ka—_oh, it's just you. Don't _scare_ me like that, I nearly got my hair in the milkshake." Predictably, she didn't apologize for nearly blowing him into little bits. "What are you here for?"

While Sasori was not a milkshake person (or really, an any-kind-of-food person), he really needed something at the moment. Coffee would be good. He made a mental note to figure out how to convert caffeine into something that a puppet could utilize. "Pein wants you back," he explained.

Hikari slurped up the last bit of melted chocolatey-milky liquid in her cup. "Nuh-uh!" she declared firmly. "I quit. I'm done. _Finis._"

"I'm fairly sure you're not allowed to quit Akatsuki," Sasori pointed out. This was ambiguous, considering the rigamorole with Orochimaru, but technically he hadn't quit, he'd defected, and nobody liked him anyway. Snakes were not supposed to do the things Orochimaru made them do.

"I blew up the lair. That probably counts as giving notice, and if I do come back Kakuzu will make me pay for it, so I won't, so there."

"You won't have to pay for it," Sasori lied. He didn't really think of it as a lie, because if he couldn't talk Pein into letting her off he'd help her pay for it. How much could a top-secret, trap-filled evil lair cost, anyway?

As Sasori rarely lied, Hikari believed him, although she did raise a quizical eyebrow. "Whatever you say, but I'm still not coming back. Go get me another milkshake, okay?"

...

"Here's your milkshake," Sasori said as soon as he had picked up her order, "now let's go."

"What part of _I quit_ don't you understand?" Hikari snapped, glaring at him.

From her tone Sasori could tell he was treading on dangerous and likely explosive ground, so he edged carefully around the question. "This is about Itachi, isn't it?" he asked.

Hikari promptly hid her face in her hands and began to sob. Sasori decided he'd picked the wrong edge, and moved the milkshake cups so her hair wouldn't get tangled around the straws. "What's wrong?" he inquired, bewildered. He'd never seen her cry before (except for that one time, but it didn't count because she had just been bitten by a gerbil, which was exponentially different from the current situation), and had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

While Hikari did reply, the first half or so of her tirade was completely incoherent, and after that the rest didn't make much sense. "...and the stupid_gerbils_ and I just realized I kind of _liked_ him and then I _stabbed _him and-and-and he hates me and I'm going to die an old maid and Natsumi's going to say 'I told you so' and I should have just stayed home and taken the husband they were going to give me!"

Having gotten this off her chest, she snatched the milkshake from Sasori and finished it faster than he would have thought physically possible. She did need to breathe, after all. But maybe she could do that through her hands?

"So, uh, what were we talking about?" Hikari asked, setting down the empty milkshake cup and brushing her bangs out of her eyes. She sounded remarkably unconcerned for someone who had just been crying her eyes out.

"We were just discussing how you were going to come back to Akatsuki headquarters with me," Sasori supplied.

Hikari laughed. "Nice try. But you won't—_ow ow owowow!_"

"Are you okay?" Sasori moved quickly to support Hikari as she stumbled to her feet. Her chair clattered to the floor behind them.

"Ow. Brain-freeze. No. Stupid gerbils," Hikari replied stiffly.

Sasori wondered what the gerbils had to do with it but decided not to ask. "Did you have to blow up my puppets along with the lair?" he asked in order to change the subject, as he helped her out into the fresh air. The summer night was warm and Hikari quickly began to perk up.

"Oh no, the puppets didn't get blown up, silly! It was kind of tempting because they are seriously creepy sometimes especially when I'm trying to sleep and you have them staked out all over the room but I didn't want you to be mad at me so I set it all up and if it worked right they should be in the basement on top of all the dirty laundry so you just need to dig them out and I think I need to breathe now." She took a few seconds to do so before continuing. "It was some of my best work, too, just so you know. It took me two whole days to get all the charges distributed without anybody seeing. Well, I'm going now. Have fun! Bye-bye!"

...

"Seriously, are you going to follow me all the way back to Iwa?" Hikari grumbled. She had not been pleased to arrive back at her bird to find Sasori already there, but there wasn't really anything she could do about it short of blasting him into little bits. Although she often threatened to do this, she didn't really feel like going through with it at the moment.

"Pein did give me the mission of bringing you back," Sasori pointed out.

"Well, that's too bad, because I'm not. Not even if you gave me Uchiha Itachi on a silver platter. Or...maybe if you did. I don't know." She cupped her chin in her hands despondently.

"Can't you at least come back and talk it over?" Sasori pleaded. "You don't want me to get in trouble, do you?"

Hikari turned to meet the most pitiful bambi-eyes a permanently fifteen-year-old puppet could manage. It was surprisingly effective, but she was not convinced. "I taught you how to do that, you know," she reminded him.

"Yes, and it's degrading," Sasori retorted. "What will it take to get you to come back?"

Hikari thought for a moment. She was pretty sure Pein wouldn't acquiesce to her demands, but it couldn't hurt to try. "First," she began, counting out on her fingers, "Uchiha Itachi as my fiance...uh, I mean teammate. Second, I get to wear whatever I want, which means _not_ the dorky hats."

"They're not dorky!" Sasori protested.

"And your fashion sense is twenty years out of date. Plus, you're a teenager, not to mention you're a boy, so you have no clue what you're talking about."

"You're a teenager."

"And an older one than you. Third, I don't have to pay for the lair or Konan's precious breakable stuff, or the Goldfish I swiped from Kisame on the way out. Fourth, permission to blow Hidan up if he's bothering me. Fifth..." she paused. "I can't think of anything else. Oh! Chocolate. Lots. How's that?"

Sasori sighed. This always puzzled Hikari, that he didn't need to breathe but he always ended up sighing and stuff when she was around. "And if you get all that you'll come back?"

"Uh-huh!" Hikari replied with a cheerful smile.

"Okay then...let's go back and I'll see what I can do."

...

When Itachi came to, Kisame filled him in on what had gone on while he was unconscious. Apparently, Deidara had skipped out and Sasori had gone to retrieve her. Itachi had never hoped so sincerely for a mission to be unsuccessful.

As several days went by without any sign of Deidara's return, Itachi began to relax. Then he began to get bored. While the stab wound in his side had been severe, it was much better now and he really didn't see the need for lying about doing nothing, whatever Kisame said. Besides, if the blonde did come back, he wanted to be anywhere but here.

Finally, he managed to convince Pein to let him go on a mission, after assuring him that yes, he would be very careful, and no, he wouldn't let himself get whacked over the head again, and this didn't have anything to do with his brother, honest, and he wouldn't kill Deidara. This last promise was given very grudgingly, and if Itachi hadn't been nearly stir-crazy by this point, he would never have acquiesced on that point. But Deidara was unlikely to come back, anyway, so it couldn't hurt, could it?

The mission was almost painfully simple: Go to Point A, get information on Item (a scroll this time), go to Point B, retrieve Item, come back. Even so, it took Itachi longer than he had estimated, as he had to move more slowly than usual due to the occasional pain in his side. It was almost three days before he entered the makeshift tent serving as Pein's office until they could rebuild and dropped the scroll on his desk. "Mission accomplished," he reported.

"Thank you," Pein said. "Now, there is something else we need to discuss—"

Before Pein could finish his statement, a blond blur dashed into the tent and flung her arms around Itachi's neck. As Itachi was not in the least expecting this, the sudden assault bore him to the ground. "Hi there!" Deidara (no, wait, it wasn't Deidara, it was an equally annoying girl...wait, Deidara _was_ a girl) chirped, looking down at him. "Whatcha doing?"

"Killing you," Itachi snarled, shoving her off of him while being careful not to touch anywhere near her chest.

"Awwwwww..."

"Itachi," Pein interrupted before Itachi could turn on the Mangekyou, "May I remind you of our agreement before you left?"

Itachi cursed inwardly but stood down. Deidara bounced onto the table and sat swinging her bare feet while staring at him with an expression Itachi couldn't quite place. It was somewhere between enamored and predatory, and very very disturbing, to say the least.

"As I was saying," Pein continued, "there is something else we need to discuss, namely, new team arrangements. Due to an agreement cotingent on Hikari-chan's return—" Deidara (Hikari?) beamed "—Sasori will now be teammates with Kisame."

Sasori and Kisame? Wait, that would mean—

"And you will now be teammates with Hikari."

Deidara squealed and leaned across the table to hug Pein. "Aww, Leader-sama, you're the best!"

Itachi barely heard her.

Surely he hadn't done anything to deserve this?

...

[A/N: I wrote a bunch of this chapter with a headache and a major sugar-high, I hope it doesn't show too much (there will probably be some extensive editing but only once the whole thing is finished). It's a little dialogue-heavy, but that couldn't really be helped at this point. The next couple chapters are going to be kind of hard because I really have to think about how their relationship makes a gradual turnaround. Hopefully it'll be kindof sortof realistic (says the fangirl who has absolutely no experience)...]


	7. In Which Reputations Suffer a Setback

[A/N: I figured I should point out the timeframe of events here before it becomes important. It starts before canon, Chapter 3 takes place around the Chuunin Exam arc, Chapter 4 takes place either right before or right after Sasuke leaves (either way he's not in Konoha at the time), and by Chapter 5 the interim has started. Sorry this took so long, I had to get some things sorted out.]

Chapter 7: In Which Reputations Suffer a Setback

While Pein had insisted on remaining at the site of Akatsuki's former headquarters, Konan would have none of that and had commandeered a hotel in a nearby town for everyone else to stay at. Mercifully, the hotel only had single-bed rooms, so Itachi was not yet required to share a room with Deidara. She did end up in the room next to his, but Itachi was exhausted enough that he forgot everything and fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

When he got up the next morning, Deidara was nowhere to be seen, so he decided to pretend she didn't exist. He found Kisame and Zetsu cooking in the kitchen, while Sasori watched and was occasionally pressed into service stirring something. Hidan and Kakuzu were also absent, but he didn't care about them except when they were useful, which was rarely.

"Good morning, Itachi," Kisame said, looking up from a pot of miso soup.

"Hn."

"If you're looking for Hikari-chan, she went out to get some fresh air," Sasori volunteered. "There's a fireworks factory about ten minutes' flight west of here, she said she was going to poke around there."

"I don't care what she does," Itachi said firmly, in a 'you'd better not say any more on that subject if you value your spleen' kind of tone. Opening the refrigerator, he found a plate of leftover riceballs to snack on until breakfast was ready.

"You might want to," Zetsu said. "**She seems convinced you're going to marry her.**"

Everything went fuzzy for a second. Itachi came to his senses to find himself gasping for breath while Kisame performed the Heimlich manouver on him. As Itachi was not a very touchy-feely kind of a person, he pushed away immediately. "She thinks _what?_" While he knew he hadn't wanted to continue discussing Deidara, he had to know what her fiendish plans were. He wasn't sure Zetsu had a spleen, anyway.

"**Ask Sasori.**"

Itachi turned on the puppet master with the most intimidating glare he could manage after nearly choking to death on a riceball. As he was an expert in intimidating glares, it was still pretty good. "What do you know of this?" he demanded, picking up the plate of riceballs again.

"Not much more than you've already heard," Sasori answered defensively. "She said—"

Whatever Deidara had said to Sasori went unrelated as the door burst open and the aforementioned girl (Itachi refused to think of her as a ninja) burst in. "Hi everybody!" she chirped. "The fireworks factory was awesome, you should've seen it. They were going off all over the place, I could see it for miles! Oh, riceballs, sweet!" She snatched the plate from Itachi and bounced up to perch on the counter. "Oh, by the way, Pein wants to see you. He has a mission for us or something," she added.

Itachi stalked out, closing the door somewhat harder than would normally have been appropriate.

...

"What's with him?" Hikari asked as the door slammed behind Itachi.

"He...well, he just found out about your _plans_," Sasori replied.

"He doesn't like me?" Hikari pouted.

Kisame suddenly began choking, which Hikari thought a bit strange because he hadn't been eating anything. "No, he doesn't like you," he said once he had recovered. "And I was under the impression _you_ didn't like _him_, either. What gives?"

Hikari looked at him blankly. "I don't know what—"

The door banged open as Itachi came back in and Hikari ducked as her Akatsuki cloak and hat nearly hit her in the face. "Come on, let's go," Itachi snapped.

"But I haven't even had breakfast yet!" Hikari protested as she helped Sasori disentangle himself from the cloak.

"Let's. Go." Itachi growled.

"Alright, alright." Hikari grabbed the cloak with one hand, picked up the plate of riceballs with the other and kicked the hat halfway to the living room before following Itachi out. "You want to maybe tell me where we're going and what we're going there for?" she asked as she caught up with him.

"No."

"You don't really seem to be getting the whole 'teammates' thing. See, we're supposed to be _working together_."

He turned on her abruptly. "No, we're not. _I_ am going to be in charge here, and _you_ are going to stay out of the way and behave yourself."

"And what if I don't?" Hikari asked.

"Then I'll make you behave," Itachi snapped. Hikari considered a retort but decided against it as she remembered how much the Mangekyou Sharingan had hurt the first time. Sighing, she followed Itachi, trying to balance the plate of riceballs on her head long enough to pull her cloak on. She was unsucsessfull, but Itachi caught the plate (and the riceballs; it must have been a Sharingan thing) before it hit the ground. At least now she wasn't going to get in trouble for breaking another of Konan's plates, but Itachi was eating her riceballs!

"Hey, those are mine!" she protested, running to catch up with him. He ignored her, which she decided later was probably better than any of the other options.

...

Deidara sulked along behind Itachi, occasionally kicking at any rocks unlucky enough to cross her path.. It was rather annoying, but better than when she was talking. Still, there was something about the girl that disturbed him. With Kisame, he had always been in control of the situation; it was part of an unspoken agreement between them. However, he had no similar control over Deidara. True, he had threatened her into obeying him (for now) but there was no guarantee that this would last longer than suited her.

"Hey, can't I at least have the last one?" she said suddenly, interrupting his thoughts. "That was my breakfast, you know!"

Itachi looked down at the riceball in his hand. He'd already eaten half of it, but he really hadn't needed as many as were on the plate. The only reason for him to finish it would be to spite her, and he didn't feel like being as petty as she could be.

Shrugging, he put the half riceball back on the plate and handed it to Deidara. "Anything to make you be quiet," he snapped, just to make sure she didn't get any wrong ideas. Of course, as soon as she figured out he wanted her to be quiet, she started talking.

"So...when are we going to get there?" she asked after finishing the riceball.

"A few days," Itachi replied.

"Okay. Where's 'there'?"

"That is none of your concern."

"Is too," she retorted defiantly. If she was trying to drag him into an argument she was unsuccessful, as he refused to answer to anything more she said.

...

Fortunately for both of their (however tenuous) sanities it only took them two days to reach their destination. Itachi, for one, would have been completely satisfied with life if he never had to hear Deidara say 'are we there _yet?_' again. If it hadn't been for Sasuke, of course.

"So, where are we, and why are we...Hey, you didn't say we were going to Earth Country!"

"You didn't ask," Itachi pointed out dryly.

"Hey, maybe I could call up my sister and meet—"

Itachi grabbed her arm before she could head for a nearby telephone booth. "You are not going to be meeting anyone. Does the fact that you are a member of an international terrorist association mean _nothing_ to you?"

Deidara considered that for a moment. "Um...yes?"

Itachi sighed. He really was not getting paid enough for this. "I am going to go and do what we were sent here to do. _You_ are going to find someplace to stay and _behave yourself_."

"Okay," she replied.

When he thought back on it later, he realized he should have been alerted by her prompt agreement.

...

Hikari started out doing exactly what Itachi had said. She found a nice, relatively respectable inn (_respectable_ respectable inns usually freaked out when they saw the Akatsuki cloaks) that Kakuzu wouldn't complain about too much and engaged one room with two beds. Itachi hadn't said how long they'd be there so she only paid for one night. Now that she had found a place to stay, she had to think of something else to do.

The town they had arrived at was on the small side, but Hikari had been there a few times before she went missing-nin and therefore knew where all the fun stuff was. Leaving her cloak in the hotel room, she went on the prowl.

...

Two hours later, after she beat the crane game in the arcade, she decided it would be a good time to do something else. The staff had not been too pleased with her method, which had involved blowing out the front of the machine and grabbing the stuffed pink bunny rabbit she'd had her eyes on the whole time.

After dodging through several alleys and over a few rooftops, she found herself in front of a ramen stand. She didn't remember it, but that was mostly because she wasn't exactly sure where she was at the moment. Anyway, she was hungry, so she sat down to order.

...

Itachi was not having a very good day. Scratch that, he was not having a very good week. First he had to put up with _her_, and now his lead on the Kyuubi had petered out. At least he'd managed to get rid of Deidara for a few hours at least. He'd been against her joining Akatsuki from the first, so how had it happened that he had been the one stuck with her?

He continued scouring the city for another half hour without much luck. Reluctantly, he decided to radio Deidara and see if she'd seen anything. He hated to admit that he needed her help, but information gathering didn't really count as help, did it?

The connection was rather fuzzy, and it took Deidara a long time to reply. "Hey," she said finally. "What's up?"

"Where are you?" Itachi asked.

"At a ramen stand, having a contest with some dumb kid who thinks he can eat more than I can. I'm ahead by eight bowls right now, but make it snappy, he's gaining on me."

"What does he look like?" Why hadn't he thought of looking for a ramen stand?

"Um...a lot like my cousin Jirou, actually, except he's maybe a little taller..."

"Deidara," Itachi forced himself to speak calmly, "I don't know what your cousin Jirou looks like."

"Oh! Well, he's blond, and he has blue eyes, and—"

Itachi cut the connection and set off at top speed.

...

"What was that about?"

"I have no idea," Hikari replied. "Where are we?"

"37 to 31. Two more bowls of miso ramen!"

"And two for me, too," Hikari added.

She was only ahead by three bowls when the top half of the ramen stand was blown off. Luckily, both of them were thrown clear, and the kid had had the presence of mind to grab the proprietor of the stand and pull him along with them. It wouldn't do for their contest to be called off just because there wasn't any more ramen available.

"Nee-chan, are you okay?" the boy asked, helping her to her feet.

"No!" Hikari snapped after she stopped choking on a bite of ramen. "When I find out who did that I'm—" she broke off as a familiar figure landed atop the smoking remnants of the ramen stand. "Oh, for crying out loud," she wailed.

"Itachi," the boy growled, standing up and beginning to gather his chakra. Before he could form any seals, however, Hikari shoved him out of the way.

"What do you think you're doing, Itachi?" she shouted. "You nearly blew me into little bits! That's not—"

"Pein only said not to kill you," Itachi pointed out. "He didn't say anything about collateral damage. Now please get out of the way so I can capture the Kyuubi."

"The what now?" Hikari said blankly. She did get out of the way, however. If Itachi was going to take any excuse to get rid of her, then she bloody well wasn't going to give him any. Of course, Itachi didn't answer her question, and as soon as she was out of his way she apparently ceased to exist to him. With nothing else to do for a while, she scrounged around until she found a bowl of ramen that was unspilt and had a minimum of dust in it and settled down to watch the fight.

...

Things were not going as well as Itachi would have liked. Not only was Deidara far enough away that any attempt to catch her in an attack would be blatantly obvious, but the Kyuubi's host was proving to difficult to take on alone. If he had been with Kisame, this would not have been an issue, but he wasn't about to request Deidara's help, and he doubted she would be about to give it, considering she appeared to be rooting for_ Naruto_ at the moment. He knew it was too much to expect her to root for him, but she might at least have the decency not to support the other side! It was bad for their reputation!

Itachi had to quit thinking about Deidara long enough to dodge yet another Rasengan. Really, the boy never seemed to tire of those things. However, with any luck, Itachi would be able to make eye contact in a few seconds and then it would be all over.

Unfortunately, with Deidara around, luck was immediately removed from the equation. As he tried to maneuver around Naruto, he saw a very familiar personage approaching rapidly from the direction of a local maid cafe. Deidara also saw him, and set the ramen aside to start gathering clay in her hands, despite Itachi's discreet signalling and very angry attempt at telepathy.

He and Kisame had managed a tactical withdrawal when they last faced Jiraiya. With Deidara, they would be lucky to get away at all. "What do you think you're doing?" he shouted over to her, giving up on being discreet. "Stop that!"

"But...but that's Jiraiya!" she yelled back. "Do you know what the bounty is on him at the clan hotsprings? We could have free massages for life!"

Itachi decided the best plan of action would be to let her be an idiot and retreat while the Sannin was distracted, but he couldn't help watching just a little bit. While Deidara started off well, she was not even close to being on an equal footing with Jiraiya, and predictably was soon caught in his Toad Mouth Bind. As this would be his best chance to permanently be rid of her, he disengaged with Naruto and headed toward the town wall.

...

Later, he couldn't really say what made him turn back, because he absolutely knew he was going to regret it. When Kisame tried to get an explanation, Itachi said that if he rescued her she would owe him something and he would finally be able to get her to shut up once in a while, but that wasn't the truth.

Whatever the reason, he burned through the toad esophagus (slightly more prepared for the smell this time) with Amaterasu just in time to drag Deidara out.

"You _saved_ me!" she shrieked as he bounded away with her in his arms. "I knew you didn't mean that whole collateral damage thing."

"I can still put you back," Itachi pointed out. Deidara wisely shut up.

For a little while, anyway. "Hey, are you okay?" she said a minute later. "You don't look so good."

Itachi considered denying this, but there was little point to that. "Amaterasu...takes a lot...of chakra," he explained, stopping on a rooftop to catch his breath.

"I got reservations for us at a hotel, if you want to rest there," Deidara said.

"No," Itachi said firmly. "We need to get back."

"Well, if you're _sure,_" Deidara said doubtfully, following him closely as he started off again.

Just before Itachi passed out half an hour later, he really wished he'd been smart enough to take her up on her suggestion.

...

Itachi woke up with a start some time later. He was fairly sure that being unconscious while Deidara was around was Very Unwise, but he hadn't exactly been able to help it at the time.

Through the light filtering in from the window, he couldn't recognize the room they were in, but it looked like any of a number of economical hotels he'd ended up in with Kisame. Deidara was nowhere in sight, however, Itachi wasn't sure whether that was a good or a bad thing. Standing up carefully, he found his way over to the lightswitch (just barely managing not to trip over a very large stuffed pink bunny _someone_ had left on the floor) and turned it on, leaning on the wall to keep his balance. His vision was doing surprisingly well, considering he'd just used Amaterasu and a fair amount of assorted other genjutsu earlier, but it was still getting steadily fuzzier. At this rate, he had estimated he had about another three years before he went totally blind; that is, if Sasuke didn't get to him first.

"Oh! You're up!"

Itachi started and nearly fell. Deidara tried to take his arm, but he shoved her away. "Are you feeling better?" she asked, none discouraged. "You really freaked me out when you collapsed. You shouldn't scare people like that, honestly."

Itachi couldn't think of a suitable reply to that in his current cognitive state, considering it was _her_ fault he'd had to use up all his chakra with Amaterasu. He turned to look at her, intending to glare her into submission. "Why...are there pink stripes in your hair?" he found himself saying instead.

"Do you like it?" she asked.

"Personally I don't care one way or the other, I just want to know why," Itachi replied.

She looked at him for a few seconds before speaking, with an expression that he translated as 'you're not going to like this.' "Well..." she said finally, "I got it to use on your hair but then I realized it was to dark to work and I didn't have anything to bleach it with and I didn't want it to go to waste, so I used it myself. I think it turned out pretty good, too, I have a shirt that matches and everything."

Itachi made a mental note to never, _ever_ sleep near Deidara again. As he tried to think of a particularly crushing reply, there was a shrill whistling sound from the kitchen, followed by an explosion that threw them both to the ground on top of each other.

"What was that?" Itachi asked, trying not to think about the proximity between their faces, or how big and blue Deidara's eyes were.

"I think that might have been the tea," Deidara replied, scrambling to her feet (and managing to shove her knee into Itachi's chest in the process). "It was," she confirmed, reappearing in the doorway to the kitchen after a few moments, holding a steaming, charred teakettle gingerly by the handle. "I _knew_ there was a reason I thought 'international terrorist' was a preferable occupation to 'housewife'. Come on, let's just go get sushi."

The pink streaks in her long blond hair accentuated its fluid movement, and Itachi caught himself staring several times as they headed down the street. Suddenly, he realized that the idea of never having to look at Deidara again did not fill him with as much joy as it had used to.

...

[A/N: Wow, long chapter! Practically a two-for-one :-) I think I'm back in my groove for this. I just started another In Which, by the way, so you might want to read it if you like this.]


	8. In Which Itachi is a Wet Blanket

[A/N: I use a lot of italics in this chapter. Consider yourself warned.]

Chapter 8: In Which Itachi is a Wet Blanket

When they arrived back, Itachi discovered that his hair was about two inches shorter than it had been when they left, but at least it wasn't pink and Deidara had had the decency to use a pair of scissors this time. The porcelain plate had left horrible split ends.

Fortunately, Pein was understanding about their failure to apprehend the Kyuubi, and after hearing about Itachi's collapse (which Itachi had told Deidara not to mention, but of course she went and did it anyway) insisted that he remain at the base until he was in better condition. Itachi would not have had any particular objection to this, except that it meant that Deidara would be staying there as well. Also, repairs to the secret lair had progressed so far that they would be able to move back in, which meant that not only would they be in the same building again, but in the same room. While he was beginning to find Deidara tolerable in small doses, the idea of being in such close contact was not especially desirable.

As most of Itachi's things had been blown up with the original lair, it only took him one trip to bring over what he had salvaged. He opened the door to what Konan said was his and Deidara's room, only to find out that it wouldn't push open wide enough to carry anything through. However, Itachi himself could fit through, so he did.

He just had time to get out of the way before several large drops of pink paint splattered at his feet. Looking up, he saw Deidara standing on a high stool and vigorously wielding a paint roller against the ceiling. The walls had already gotten the same treatment, and from what he could see through the translucent dropcloth covering everything else, a fair amount of the furniture was the same hue.

"What are you doing?"

Deidara started and fell backward. Itachi caught her before she could hit the floor: not on purpose, of course. She just happened to be falling in his direction.

"Painting, duh. What does it look like?" Her tone was teasing, but Itachi didn't like being teased.

"I am not sleeping in a pink...I am not sleeping near you. Ever." He let go of Deidara, ignoring her angry yelp as she hit the floor, and stalked out.

Ten minutes later, Konan informed him that he couldn't sleep on the couch.

Twenty minutes later, Kisame told him that Sasori's stuff took up too much room for him to sleep in there.

An hour later, he was back in their room with a measuring tape, a can of white paint, and some shoji screens he'd found in the attic. He hadn't been able to find his old sheets (which had been a perfectly reasonable dark blue) but he would not put burning them past her, so he decided to get something suitable later.

"What are you doing?" Deidara asked a few minutes later, pausing from her painting to watch as Itachi marked a neat line down the walls and across the floor and ceiling.

"Dividing the room in half," Itachi replied calmly, setting up one of the shoji screens on the line. "Now," he continued, "that is your half, and this is my half."

"My half's smaller than your half," Deidara protested in an injured tone.

"No it isn't," Itachi retorted. "I measured it precisely."

"But the door opens on my side and I can't use that space, see?" She demonstrated by swinging the door open and closed.

Itachi tried to think of a suitable retort and failed, so he settled for changing the subject. "There will be nothing pink over this line," he proclaimed firmly.

Deidara promptly grabbed a pile of Sons of Suna posters and a box of tacks and headed for Itachi's share of the walls. Itachi grabbed her arm before she could get there. "None of those, either."

"They're not pink..." Deidara pointed out.

"I don't care, you are not putting _boy band_posters up in my half of the room!" Itachi snapped. If Pein had listened to him when he said enlisting Deidara was a bad idea, he wouldn't be having theis conversation now, but no...

"You're meeeeeeean," Deidara whined, stomping back to her half of the room and flopping down on the bed. Itachi ignored her, and left assuming that would be the end of it.

Unfortunately for Itachi, he had only had one sibling, and never had to share a room. Due to this, he was completely unversed in the art of fighting tooth and nail for mere _lebensraum_. Deidara, on the other hand, had eleven siblings (twelve, now) and had shared a room with constantly increasing numbers of them. Add to that the less-than-optimal sanity and more-than-optimal skill with explosives of the Deidara clan, and home renovations turned into a warzone.

Itachi didn't stand a chance.

When he returned to their room, after a walk that did little to clear his head, the first thing he saw was a massive _Yoake o Kowasu _poster taking up most of the wallspace over his bed. The second thing he saw was Deidara standing on a chair, preparing to tack up another one.

"What are you doing?" he demanded, with a distinct sense of deja vu.

Deidara glared down at him, one hand perched on her hip (Itachi suddenly noticed how much the angle showed off her figure). "It's not pink, and it's not a boy band poster, so what's your problem now?"

"The fact that you're putting up posters for the 'Chick Flick of the Year' in my half of the room," Itachi informed her icily.

"What's so bad about that? I liked it."

"Exactly."

"Hey, it's not my fault you have bad taste in—"

_"Youkai aren't supposed to sparkle!"_

Deidara blinked twice, and promptly fell off the chair laughing. Itachi stood her laughter for a few seconds, then stormed out of the room, slamming the door to shut out the sound of her laughing at him.

...

Kisame looked up in surprise as Itachi slammed into the room. "Something wrong?" he asked. The Uchiha was usually so calm and staid that to actually see him upset was a rarity. No one but Kisame ever saw him like that...at least until Hikari came along. If Itachi was acting like this, it meant he was in a Very Bad Mood, as opposed to his usual Moderately Bad Mood or Not Caring At All Mood.

Itachi sank down on Sasori's bed with a groan. "She won't leave me alone."

"Who? Hikari-chan?"

"_Deidara,_" Itachi corrected him firmly.

Kisame wondered if this had something to do with the reason why Hidan, Kakuzu, and that weird Tobi kid were currently holed up in the room across the hall from Itachi and Hikari's with a large bowl of popcorn. "She probably just wants your attention," he suggested, discreetly edging out of Itachi's eyeline before making his next statement. "If you married her, she'd probably stop."

Itachi was dumbstruck for several seconds. "You're _joking,_" he said finally.

Kisame shrugged, turning away so he didn't have to face the Sharingan. "It worked for me."

"You were married?"

"A long time ago. She...died."

"Oh." It seemed as if Itachi was going to say something more, but he turned on his heel and left. Kisame went back to working on Samehada.

...

Itachi walked slowly back to his room as he thought about what Kisame had said. Marry Deidara? The idea was a joke! Certainly, he found her tolerable—vaguely—but nothing beyond that. Besides, it wasn't as if that sort of thing fit in his plans, even if he did want it...which he most definitely did not. To marry anyone, when he fully intended to die within only a few years, would hardly be fair.

Pushing the door open, he looked around for Deidara. She was nowhere to be seen, so he decided that this would be a very good time to take down her posters. As he was reaching for the first one, he sensed the all-to-familiar presence just to late to avoid a very aggressive hug.

"Hi! You still mad? I'll take down the posters if you _really_want me to."

"Deidara, let go of me," Itachi snapped. It was time to get a few things straight.

Luckily, Deidara actually did what he said this time, and Itachi turned to face her. "Why do you want to marry me?" he demanded.

"Huh? Well, I guess I just—"

"Do you want to settle _down_? Raise a _family__?_" Itachi could barely say the word.

"That was the general i—"

"You join a group of international terrorists and you want to get _married?_" Deidara started to say something but Itachi refused to let her get a word in. "We're _criminals_, Hikari. That life isn't for us. If you wanted to get married, you should have stayed home. The—the most we can hope is that we win the battle we_ die _in!" Itachi couldn't even hope for that. "You...there's no point in it, Hikari, so you should just give up this petty infatuation!"

For a few moments, they stood staring at each other. Itachi was surprised at his own outburst, and Hikari's eyes were wide with shock.

Suddenly, she turned and bolted out of the room, pausing briefly at the doorway. "You're a horrible person, you know that?" she said.

"Trust me, I know," Itachi whispered, as the door closed behind her.

He didn't emerge from the room for some time, occupying himself with angrily tearing down and burning her posters. Finally, he decided to go get something to eat. Most of the others were clustered at the bottom of the stairs, watching expectantly.

"Lovers' spat?" Hidan smirked, as Itachi stalked past.

"Shut up," Itachi growled, more aggressively than usual. Hidan, making a rare wise decision, shut up.

Kisame was in the kitchen, making miso soup. He was the only one of them who could cook decently, besides Konan, but his repertoire was a bit limited, to say the least. He didn't try to start a conversation, for which Itachi was relieved, but served up some of the miso soup without comment.

The miso was hot and soothing, and Itachi didn't feel quite so overwrought after he finished it. "Where's Hikari?" he asked finally.

"She left with Sasori a little while ago," Kisame told him. "She said she wanted to get away from here."

Itachi couldn't blame her for that.

...

[A/N: _Yoake o Kowasu_ is translated _Breaking Dawn_. Who me, make Twilight jokes? *whistles innocently*]


	9. In Which Hikari Makes a Splash

[A/N: I have another poll up for what story to start next, please vote!]

Chapter 9: In Which Hikari Makes a Splash

"So..." Sasori began cautiously, "what happened with you and Itachi?" He ducked just in time as a nearby tree blew up. "You know what, just forget I asked."

Maybe he would be able to find out from one of the others once they got back from rendezvousing with his contact. Whatever it was must have been serious; Hikari was back in her boy-form, which she hadn't utilized since her original exposure.

"That…that…gah!" Deidara fumed. "I love him…or I hate him…and I can't figure out which! What does it matter, anyway," she continued, shrugging despondently. "He can't be bothered with something so _petty_."

Sasori was beginning to regret his decision not to join the eavesdropping party. It would certainly have helped him understand what was going on now. He had never seen Deidara like this; even when he caught a bunny rabbit and let her hold it she wouldn't come out of her dark mood.

"Aren't you even going to ask where we're going?" he said finally, unable to stand the silence any longer.

"Okay, fine. Where are we going?" Deidara asked, although she didn't seem particularly interested in the answer.

"Just inside the Fire Country border," Sasori explained. "We're going to meet one of my contacts there."

"Whatever, un," Deidara said sulkily.

Since they weren't flying, it took Deidara and Sasori nearly a week to reach the border. Sasori called a halt a safe distance from a large bridge spanning a massive chasm. Both ends were guarded by Konoha shinobi.

"Can you make a bird, Hikari?" Sasori asked. "The rendezvous point is across the canyon, in the Stone Circle." He pointed so she could see what he was referring to.

The Stone Circle had been either built or formed—it was hard to tell which—into just exactly what it was called, making a rather uneven circle of rough boulders. Once they were inside, no one would be able to see them except from above. The trick was getting there; the bridge had not been guarded the last time he came to visit.

Deidara shrugged and set to work. Sasori sheltered behind a tree a safe distance away; Deidara's silence was beginning to unnerve him and he didn't want to trigger the blonde's even-shorter-than-usual temper.

Although the bird completed a short time later was serviceable, it was not made with as much loving detail as Deidara usually put into her work. "'Kay, it's done," she said curtly. "Let's go, okay?"

As the bird swooped down toward its destination, Deidara prepared to jump off. "What are you doing?" Sasori asked worriedly. They were almost over the canyon at the moment, and while he didn't think Itachi had hurt Deidara _that_ badly, he couldn't help feeling apprehensive.

"You take the bird over there, okay?" Deidara said. "I'm just going down into the canyon. I saw a waterfall in there that I want to go look at."

…

Hikari jumped skillfully off the bird, ignoring Sasori's shocked gasp. By setting off small charges in her hands, she could partially cancel out the force of the landing, and chakra would take care of everything else. A few seconds later, she splashed lightly into the stream running through the canyon and began to walk upstream down the bank towards the waterfall.

There was a gentle breeze wafting through the canyon, and that, combined with the soothing sound of the running water, began to ease Hikari's hurt and anger. She still couldn't quite forgive Itachi for being so unkind about it, but she could see the reasoning behind what he'd said.

"He puts too much stock in the status quo," she grumbled, kicking a rock into the stream.

It made quite a good splash, so she kicked another in. Then another. Then she started throwing rocks into the stream. After a while, she tired of that, so she began wrapping explosives around rocks and throwing those into the water. She felt quite a bit better after a few good blasts.

Unfortunately, the explosives she was setting off meant that she didn't hear the Konoha ninjas coming up behind her until it was almost too late.

There were five of them: the two boys from Team 9, plus a pink-haired girl and two jounin. One of them she recognized from some of the forms she'd read on Tsunade's desk as Hatake Kakashi.

She was in too close quarters to take to the air. To add to her difficulty, four of the five shinobi she was up against appeared to be expert close-range hand-to-hand fighters, although the pink-haired girl was definitely limiting herself in some way. Hikari wasn't sure why until the girl punched the canyon wall, bringing down a ten-foot-wide section of it to block Hikari's escape downstream.

Hikari was beginning to regret expending chakra in the explosives she'd been playing with. That and the Genderswitch Technique she was still using were taking up most of her reserves. In fact, her hold over the Genderswitch Technique was beginning to waver. If she didn't want Konoha to find out her secret and hold her to the ten-year-old marriage contract she was running away from, she would have to get away, and fast.

The pink-haired girl was still holding back, clearly not used to fighting in company with those she was with at the moment. This left a gap that Hikari managed to dart through, although she took a nasty blow from the Hyuuga boy in the process.

Unfortunately, this still left Kakashi and his…ankle-biting dog? She felt a bit guilty about kicking the little pug, but it got Kakashi out of the way long enough for her to dodge past him.

As she darted upstream, she had just enough time to realize that the other jounin was in front of her before she had to dodge his first blow. His next kick came too fast to dodge or block, and she was only able to think that that was going to hurt _a lot_ before his foot connected with her midriff.

…

"Gai, what did you _do_?" Kakashi asked as he ran over to the other jounin, who was standing near the Akatsuki member. The blonde boy didn't seem to be nearly as much of a threat now, as he was hugging his abdomen with an agonized expression on his face.

Gai shrugged. "I did not think I had hid him this hard, My Eternal Rival."

The three genin soon arrived as well. As they watched, the Akatsuki boy suddenly gasped, then began to scream in pain as golden sparks of light encircled his body.

Kakashi wasn't sure what was going on, but he motioned the three genin to step back a bit, in case this was a last-resort suicide jutsu.

The screams went on and on, broken only by ragged intakes of breath. Kakashi had never heard a boy scream like that—in fact, he'd never heard anything scream like that, gender notwithstanding.

Finally, the screams stopped as the Akatsuki boy fell unconscious into the water. Kakashi waited to wade out to him until the golden light faded, revealing…a girl?

Yes, he concluded, that was definitely a girl, and if he didn't get to her soon, her hair was going to pull her under. Handing Pakkun to Neji, he waded quickly to where the girl was still floating and picked her up. Due to the water in her hair, she was much heavier than he had expected. As he came back to the bank, Sakura grabbed the girl's hair and began to twist the water out of it.

"Kakashi-san, that's the person who was impersonating Tsunade-sama when Uchiha Itachi escaped!" Neji said suddenly.

"Then we'd better hurry back to Konoha," Kakashi said. "Akatsuki might be planning something."

…

Sasori had just finished his business with the contact when he heard Hikari's screams. By the time he got the bird in the air and over the canyon where he could see, the Konoha ninjas were already headed back towards Konoha. One of them was holding Hikari, who was, at the moment, both female and out cold.

Sasori would have gone to her rescue, but his control over the bird was limited compared to

Hikari's, and he didn't have the skill required to maneuver it into the narrow canyon. He would have to get help and come back, he decided, turning the bird back towards Ame. Itachi was the most familiar with Konoha among the Akatsuki, but whether he would want to have anything to do with Hikari after their recent argument Sasori wasn't sure.

The bird had only been meant to be a temporary conveyance, and with the way Sasori was pushing it, it ran out of power less than halfway back to Ame. He would have to walk the rest of the way, and hope Konoha wouldn't treat Hikari too badly before they could rescue her.

…

During the ten days that Sasori and Hikari were gone, Itachi had nothing to do but mope around the base. Of course, he didn't think of it as moping. He preferred to call it 'introspection'. Whatever it was, ten days of it was a bit too much. He thought about asking Kisame to go on an assignment with him somewhere, but not only were there no missions available at the moment, he didn't really want Kisame to mention marriage again.

The other Akatsuki members wisely avoided him. Itachi in a good mood was dangerous enough, ('good' being a relative term), but Itachi in a bad mood was a disaster waiting to happen.

Konan invited him to have tea with her one afternoon, a considerable honor considering how she protected her few remaining tea services. Itachi accepted more for the sake of having something to do than out of any actual desire to have tea and little sandwiches in heart shapes.

Luckily, Konan had the grace not to bring up Hikari, and Itachi actually found that he was, while maybe not quite enjoying himself, at least considerably distracted from a certain exasperating, fascinating blonde.

As Konan poured a second cup of Assam, there was a knock on the office door.

[A/N: I actually don't have anything to say here. Wow. As always, I love comments!]


	10. In Which a Wedding is Crashed

[A/N: This is almost halfway through! How time does fly, huh? Anyway, I have a poll up for what story I'm going to start next, please vote!]

Chapter 10: In Which a Wedding is Crashed

At the polite knock, Konan set the teapot down and went to the door. Itachi could hear her talking to Sasori, but there was no evidence of Hikari's being with him. Not that he cared, anyway. And he was _definitely_ not probing for her chakra signature.

"I see," Konan said finally. "Wait a bit while I gather everyone." Sighing, she closed the office door.

"Is something wrong?" Itachi asked.

"Aside from the fact that horrible things always happen when I end up in charge, everything's peachy," Konan snapped sharply. "Go bring everyone here. I'm afraid tea will have to wait."

Itachi stalked out, brushing past Sasori as he went into the hall. There was still no sign of Hikari. This wasn't like her; perhaps she was sulking about their discussion. It certainly hadn't been a fight—they had nothing to fight over. Itachi had stated facts, and Hikari had reacted to them.

Kisame, Hidan and Kakuzu were quickly summoned to the office. Zetsu was absent, as he and 'Tobi' had gone with Pein.

…

Sasori tried not to show how worried he felt as the other Akatsuki members crowded into the office. Part of it was still under construction, so the amount of viable space wasn't exactly generous.

Itachi was the first to arrive. He must have noticed by now that Hikari was gone. If he didn't want her back and refused to help, there wouldn't be much the others could do.

"Now that everyone's here," Konan said once they had all gathered in the office, "I will explain what is going on." Her tone was businesslike, but her annoyed expression showed how much she disliked being in charge. "Deidara Hikari has been captured by Konoha."

"Oh, good," Kakuzu said promptly. "Now maybe we can all get a little—" he shut up once he caught a glimpse of Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan.

"So what are we going to do about it?" Hidan asked, although from his tone it sounded like he shared Kakuzu's point of view.

Itachi already had his cloak on and was looking around for his hat. "We're going to go get her, obviously," he said calmly.

Sasori was as surprised as everyone else by this reaction, but there was one other thing that, while it could make Itachi change his mind, he had to mention. "There's something else Konan hasn't told you," he began.

"And what is that?" Itachi demanded.

"Hikari is under a marriage contract to someone in Konoha; she doesn't know who. She didn't tell me all of the particulars, but she did say that the contract would be void if she became engaged to someone else."

Everyone started staring at Itachi while trying to look like they weren't.

"So what you're saying is that unless I propose to her we may not be able to get her back?" Itachi asked.

Sasori nodded. If Itachi refused, he would try to retrieve Hikari himself, perhaps with Kisame's help, but he didn't see much chance of success. They had only succeeded on their last mission to Konoha because Hikari had been with them.

Luckily, Itachi didn't keep them in suspense long. "Very well," he declared, "we'll stop at a jeweler's on the way. Do you know what her ring size is?"

…

Kakashi was having a Very Bad Day. This was especially disappointing, as it had started off quite well with an easy patrol mission that was mostly looking around at the pretty scenery and claiming you were 'surveying the area'. Of course, Gai had been there too, but that wasn't always a bad thing. Kakashi would, of course, have preferred if Anko had been there instead, maybe with a picnic basket and some nice sake, but that could easily have been remedied later.

Then that Akatsuki girl (Sakura had verified that it was indeed a girl) had turned up and ruined everything. Not only had they had to rush home, but he was soaking wet from carrying her to the detention area. That wasn't even mentioning the fact that she had kicked his dog! Pakkun insisted he was all right, but it still made Kakashi furious that the girl had resorted to something so cheap.

At the moment, he was sitting outside Tsunade's office, waiting for her to decide to tell him whatever was so terribly important that he had to sit in the waiting room while still soaking wet. He knew it had something to do with the girl, as Ibiki had just delivered the results of the first interrogation. Surely he could change into something dry first, though?

Finally, Shizune told him that he could come into the office. Kakashi brushed past her and dripped into the room, stopping precisely on the rug that wasn't supposed to get wet. He knew it was petty, but it made him feel a little better.

"Kakashi-san," Tsunade began, riffling through a small stack of papers on her desk, "You recently brought to my attention that you were under a marriage contract, correct?"

Well, this was a bit random. "Yes, but as I stated in my request, not only was the contract signed ten years ago, but the girl went missing before anything could, you know, happen. Under the circumstances—"

"There has recently been a change in the circumstances," Tsunade interrupted.

"…oh?" Kakashi said weakly. That sounded foreboding.

"This," —Tsunade held up one of the papers she had been looking at— "says that you are, currently, engaged to one Deidara Hikari, Iwa registered kunoichi."

Kakashi nodded, not sure where this conversation was going but not liking it in the least. "What is the point of all this?" he asked.

"The Akatsuki girl you just brought in. She says her name is Deidara Hikari."

Explaining this to Anko would be interesting, to say the least. "But if she's turned missing-nin, surely that voids—"

Tsunade shook her head. "Sorry. Unless she's engaged to someone else (which she's not) the contract stands. Ah…what do you have that you could wear to get married in?"

"Well, there's…something…if I could just go and look," Kakashi finished quickly, preparing to make his escape.

"Not so fast," Tsunade snapped before he could get to the door. "I haven't told her yet. Come on, let's go."

…

"I have to marry _him! Un?_"

Kakashi winced at the girl's shriek. There was a one-way mirror facing Hikari's cell, and he had a pretty good idea who was behind it laughing their heads off. And was that popcorn he could smell?

"Yes, I'm afraid so," Tsunade said soothingly. Kakashi thought she could do better sympathizing with him. After all he was the one who was going to have to tell Anko about this!

"But…he's the one who wanted a raise because he didn't have time to read his trashy books!"

"Hey, they're not…" Kakashi began to protest. "Wait, how did you know that?"

"I processed the request," Hikari informed him haughtily. "It's denied, by the way."

"Tsunade-sama, that's hardly valid…"

Tsunade shrugged. "Well, if you want me to deny it instead of her, feel free. Anyway, enough of that. The wedding's at seven in the evening, day after tomorrow—and I expect _both_ of you to be there."

"I don't see how I could help that," Hikari pointed out.

"I was talking to him, not you," Tsunade replied. "You can go now, Kakashi…but not too far."

Kakashi could still hear Hikari's shrill protests behind him as he shut the door. Taking a few steps into the corridor, he flung the door of the monitoring room open. "Thought I'd find you watching," he said accusingly.

"Oh, Kakashi," Inoichi said cheerfully. "High time you settled down, isn't it? This should be just the ticket for you."

Kakashi glared, and Chouza held out the bowl of popcorn in a conciliatory gesture. "No thanks, I'm not hungry," Kakashi said.

Shikaku was the only one who was sympathetic. "That," he said, shaking his head knowingly, "is a troublesome woman."

"…So," Inoichi cut in, "do you need a best man?"

…

With time of the essence, Konan created a seal array to transport the Akatsuki most of the way to Konoha. Hidan and Kakuzu chose to stay behind, after Itachi 'requested' it.

At a small trading town a short distance from Konoha, Itachi insisted that they stop to find a ring. He wasn't particularly picky in that regard, but he did want something nice. The jeweler's supply was limited, however, Itachi found a simple solitaire ring of white gold with an opal in a square setting.

"That's done," he said, after paying the jeweler and slipping the small box into a pocket. "Let's go."

They covered the rest of the distance to Konoha in record time, and were soon perched on the wall of the village, overlooking the Hokage tower. The sun had just set, and its glow still hung over the Hokage Mountain. Strangely enough, either ANBU hadn't noticed the intruders, were busy somewhere else…or were setting a trap. Itachi suspected the latter, and was surprised at how much he disliked the idea of Hikari getting hurt.

"They're in the Hokage tower," he announced after a brief examination with the Sharingan. "Her, Hatake Kakashi, the Hokage, and a few others. It may be a trap. Shall we go?"

…

Just before they were going to get ready for the ceremony, Kakashi managed to get a few minutes alone with Hikari.

"What do you want?" she demanded. "And don't think I'm not going to burn your books as soon as—"

"I know, I know, just keep it down, okay? I don't want this any more than you do. So, do you have any ideas?"

"Nope, not a one," Hikari admitted. "Is there anybody watching with popcorn right now? Because I'm hungry."

"…No," Kakashi replied. "Now don't get off the subject here. Is there, you know, anyone else you'd rather be with?"

"Yes. Male, breathing, and Not You."

Kakashi sighed. "Specifically?"

"Well…" Hikari sighed dreamily. "There is somebody…but we just had a fight so I think he'd be glad to have me out of the way. I don't see what his problem is anyway. _Yoake o Kowasu_ was a totally awesome movie! And it's not like I was watching it for the sparkly…I'm sorry, were we talking about something else?"

"Your boyfriend," Kakashi reminded her, pouring himself a glass of water. Just listening to her talk that fast was making him thirsty.

"Oh. You mean Itachi?"

Kakashi choked, and Hikari ducked out of the way of the spray of water. "_What did you just say?_" he demanded once he could breathe again.

"Uchiha Itachi," Hikari repeated in a puzzled tone. "You know him?"

"I'm having difficulty imagining him as anyone's boyfriend, is all."

"Oh. He is too, actually. He still hasn't figured out that he's madly in love with me, even though, you know, he is. Kind of. Except for that one time with the fish knife and the porcelain plate. And the gerbils. But that wasn't his fault. Not all, anyway. What were we talking about?"

"…You know what, forget it."

…

The ceremony started off about as well as anything of that kind could. Hikari was wearing a rather outdated white dress with fur trim borrowed from Inuzuka Tsume, as well as long gloves coated with seals on the inside to prevent any explosive incidents. After Hana and Ino made several abortive attempts at putting Hikari's hair up, they had settled on a wraparound braid with the rest of her hair down.

Kakashi was wearing a rather more dressy version of the usual shinobi uniform, as were Inoichi and Shikaku, who had talked him into letting them be his groomsmen. Or rather, Inoichi had begged until Kakashi agreed to make him shut up. At least they didn't have any popcorn.

The bridesmaids were a bit more worrying. Sakura was attempting to conceal how freaked out she was that her sensei was getting married, while Anko just looked furious—and Kakashi couldn't tell who at. He had tried to explain the situation earlier, but had given up after she nearly stabbed him with a dango stick that still had dango on it.

Jiraiya wasn't there. At least Kakashi could be thankful for that.

"All right, let's get this started," Tsunade said finally, straightening The Hat. "I'm going to cut this down a bit for time, just so you know. Let's see…on this joyous day we gather…yadda yadda yadda…before witnesses to seal these two together forever, death do us part and all that. Anyway. Sorry, no rings yet, we'll get those tomorrow. Kakashi, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

"Ah…"

Tsunade tapped her foot impatiently. Anko glared. Inoichi barely suppressed a snicker.

"Can I think about that for a moment?"

"No!" Tsunade snapped, pinching the bridge of her nose, a pained expression on her face.

Kakashi opened his mouth to speak just as the door burst open and four intruders in Akatsuki cloaks stormed in. Two of them were a woman and teenage boy he had never seen before, but the other two were Uchiha Itachi and his partner Kisame.

Hikari glared at Itachi. "Hey Itachi. What, no wedding present? You might at least sign the guestbook. Actually, I'm not that sure we have a guestbook. Do we have a guestbook?"

That last was not addressed to Itachi, and Tsunade shook her head.

"Okay, you can't sign the guestbook, so what are you doing here?"

To all of the Konoha nin's surprise, Itachi did not incinerate the girl for her insolence. In fact, he actually smiled (well, it was a smile for him, anyway) as he tossed a small box in Hikari's direction.

Anko made a snatch at it, but Hikari dove faster and got it before she did, opening it while pretending to look uninterested. "Well, what do you know. It's a ring…" she frowned. "Wait a second…are you proposing or something, Mr. Missing-nin-shouldn't-get-married?"

…

Itachi sighed. Hikari was more upset about their fight than he'd thought she'd be after two weeks. "Yes, I'm proposing."

"Oh." For once lost for words, Hikari stared at the ring, then back to Itachi. "You're not doing it right."

Konan suddenly burst into hysterical laughter. Itachi wasn't sure why this was so funny. "I have given you a ring. You have accepted it. That is the way these things are supposed to be done, correct?"

"Well, basically, I guess, but you're supposed to be, like, romantic about it and all. See, if you'd watched _Yoake o Kowasu,_ you'd know this kind of—"

"For the last time, I am not going to—"

"Hey, does this mean I don't have to marry her?" Kakashi asked as Hikari and Itachi continued their 'conversation'.

"I guess not," Tsunade said, sounding just as bewildered as everyone else felt.

"So I can do this?" Kakashi asked just before he grabbed Anko and kissed her passionately.

"Yeah, sure, whatever floats your boat…Just don't ask me to perform the ceremony yet, okay? I've had enough of that for one day."

…

"Looklooklook! I've got a _riiiing!_"

"I know," Sasori replied. "You've shown it to me ten times already."

"But it's _sparkly…_"

"Yeah, sure. Nice," Sasori said, mostly to placate her.

"Konan, look!" Hikari called, running over to the person who was most likely to appreciate it. "Isn't it great!"

Konan spent a few moments 'ooh'ing and 'aah'ing to Hikari's satisfaction. "The array I set up only works one-way," she informed her afterwards. "Can you make enough birds to fly us back?"

"Okay, but I get to ride with Itachi!"

Konan of course agreed to this, and the five of them were soon on their way.

"So…" Hikari began after a few minutes of sitting next to Itachi in silence, "What made you change your mind?"

"I don't know," Itachi replied, leaning in oh-so-close and running a hand gently through her hair. "Do I have to have a reason?"

"Well, I don't mind not having a reason, but you always seem to want one," Hikari pointed out.

Itachi smiled. "Maybe I wanted to do something for myself for once," he whispered before kissing her gently.

…

[A/N: So, this is the first time I've ever had any kissing in any of my stories. Please tell me how you think it worked, okay? Also, KakaAnko isn't a pairing I've used before, or even encountered a lot, but I had to pair him with somebody and Anko's always good for a few laughs. Finally, I have _no_ idea where that Ino-Shiko-Chou characterization came from, but I like it. Hope everybody's satisfied with the way this is going!]


	11. In Which Itachi and Hikari are an Item

[A/N: Erm…I'm pretty sure I fail at writing romantic stuff. Sorry!]

Chapter 11: In Which Itachi and Hikari are An Item

Much to the relief of the Akatsuki members, there was no pursuit as they left Konoha. This was mostly because everyone was either in a state of shock at what happened or trying to figure out just what exactly _had_ happened.

After their first kiss, Itachi had lapsed into silence. The sky was wide, and the stars were bright, and the full moon hung above them. Everything was beautiful.

"So," Hikari said as they crossed the border, "When do you think we could, you know, have the wedding?"

Itachi blinked, and turned to face her. "The wedding?" he repeated.

"Well, yeah," Hikari replied. "It's what you usually have after an engagement…or do the Uchiha do things differently?"

"No, but…" Itachi actually sounded a little flustered. He had been acting considerably more emotional lately, Hikari realized. "I mean, of course we're going to have a wedding…but it doesn't have to be right away."

Hikari pushed away from Itachi's embrace so she could face him. "You're not trying to back out of this or something, are you?"

Itachi shook his head, absently running a hand through her hair. Hikari's skin tingled at the light touch. "No, of course not. There's just a few things I need to…settle…before I could get married. Besides, you need some time to prepare for the wedding, don't you?"

"Ooh, right, the wedding!" Hikari squealed. "Do you think we should have a traditional ceremony, or one of those foreign things? And how many bridesmaids do you think we could have? Because if we don't have very many all my sisters are going to fight. Besides, I bet Konan would like to be a bridesmaid. And then my family's going to want to come. Do you have any—no that's right you don't, sorry, oh wait, you have a brother or something."

"I don't think he would want to come to my wedding," Itachi said quietly, twining a lock of Hikari's hair around his hand.

"Well, that's his loss. Where do you think we should have it? Because there's this really pretty place up in Iwa where my sister got married before she moved to Suna. There's this little temple, and it's all forest-y…"

…

It took two days to get back to Amegakure, and Itachi and Hikari discussed the wedding for almost the entire time. Or rather, Hikari talked, and Itachi said 'yes' or 'hn' or 'that's nice' in all the right places. Hikari didn't mind—it was the longest they'd ever talked without him telling her to shut up, anyway.

When they walked in, they quickly discovered that they weren't the only ones who'd just got back. Hikari nearly tripped over Tobi, who was lying in the middle of the living room floor coloring. He had made some very…_unique_…alterations to the picture he was working on. Hikari was pretty sure _Atashi no Kouma_ had never had quite that much blood in it, but she hadn't seen the latest episodes yet.

Zetsu was skulking about the room, tending to the houseplants. "Pein wants to know why the base was left unattended," he announced after everyone had trooped in.

"Unattended? We left Hidan and Kakuzu here," Sasori pointed out.

"**Exactly.**"

"He's got a point," Hikari said. "I wouldn't leave Hidan and Kakuzu anywhere either. Unless it was splattered on the walls."

Itachi raised one eyebrow but didn't disagree. He probably concurred with her opinion that Hidan and Kakuzu were about the annoyingest things on the planet. Besides gerbils, that is. Gerbils were the spawn of evil!

She didn't realize she'd just said that out loud until Konan started snickering. At this point, she considered pointing out that the gerbils had been Konan's fault, her and her expensive porcelain plates (who would seriously let a bunch of socially challenged S-rank missing-nin anywhere near things like that, anyway) but remembered that Konan had helped head up the wedding-crashing party back at Konoha. "…Okay then, let's go see what Pein wants."

…

Pein was, to put it mildly, decidedly displeased to discover that two of his subordinates had gotten engaged without consulting him. When he had originally formed Akatsuki, that hadn't exactly been anything to worry about, as the only woman in the group was his own girlfriend.

Of course, he couldn't set a precedent, or everyone would start skirt-chasing and their peace plans would be derailed. He was about to order Itachi and Hikari to break off the engagement when Konan started cooing about how it was so _wonderful_ that there was going to be a _wedding_ and didn't Hikari's _ring_ look so _nice_…

Pein knew when to drop an argument.

…

"Hey, Itachi, what happened to my posters?" Hikari asked as she pushed the door to their room open.

"Posters?" Itachi tried to look as if he didn't know what she was talking about. This effort was unsuccessful.

"No, seriously, where's my _Yoake o Kowasu_ poster? It was right…over…" As Hikari pointed across the room, her voice trailed off when she noticed the streak of gray ash on the pink wall. "You _burned_ it? Seriously, I know you didn't like that movie, but isn't that over-reacting a bit?"

"I am sorry," Itachi said, gently taking Hikari's other hand in his. "At the time, I did not wish to be reminded of you. I will replace it, if you value it that much."

Hikari laughed. "Forget it, who cares about the dumb sparkly bishies? It's not like I'm engaged to any of _them_, after all!"

They spent the rest of the afternoon redecorating, as Hikari quickly decided that she had tired of the Suns of Suna, as well. This left their room with nothing but bare pink walls.

"Hey, Itachi," Hikari said, affixing an explosive tag to the last poster and putting it in the pile to destroy outside, "what do you want to decorate with?"

Itachi had never really thought about this. He was not as artistically oriented as Hikari or her former teammate, Sasori. He usually ignored art in general, as long as it stayed out of his way and didn't try to blow him up, stab him, poison him, or dye his hair. Still, Hikari looked as if she expected an answer. "A mural, perhaps?" he suggested.

"Ooh, that's a good idea!" Hikari squealed. "We'll have to repaint the walls white first, though. Look, we'll put, like, a forest here, and have a twiny vine that goes over the door, and then a castle over there, and then a field with flowers and bunnies and little birdies, and then over on that wall, we'll have an epic ninja battle with tons of stuff blowing up! How's that sound?"

Resting his chin on one hand, Itachi processed what Hikari had just said. It still amazed him how quickly she could talk, and how abruptly she tended to change subjects. It was quite dizzying, but he liked it all the same. Everything about her was motion; motion, and freedom, and joy. Strange things for a missing-nin, and things Itachi had never thought he could have. "It sounds delightful," he replied.

…

It took two weeks of on-and-off work between missions for Hikari's mural to be finished. They didn't have to go very far for the missions; Pein was planning something big soon, Hikari thought, but lying low until then. Unfortunately, that meant that she hadn't been able to let loose for quite a while. She knew of two or three good ammunition dumps within a hundred miles, but until she got a proper excuse to head in that general direction she was stuck.

The mural had more than occupied her time, however. It had turned out to her complete satisfaction, even if Itachi thought that the charming forest scene with bunnies and raccoons and birdies was a bit incongruous next to the 'epic ninja battle with tons of stuff blowing up'. She wasn't quite sure what his problem was with it. She'd blown up tons of stuff in charming forests with bunnies and raccoons and birdies!

Eventually, however, there was no more mural to be painted on, not even the last loving little details of the feathers on the bluebirds or the debris from the explosion. No missions either, and although Konan had been a lot nicer lately, she'd still blow her top if Hikari did anything to endanger any of her surviving tea-services.

Hikari was _bored_.

"Hey, Itachi," she whispered across the room. "Are you awake?"

Itachi raised his head from his pillow looked over at her blearily. His eyes were flat black, which was strange for him, and he squinted just a little as he looked her way. "I wasn't until you decided to enquire," he replied, his eyes shifting into their usual red swirls. She wished he wouldn't, she liked them better the other way. The red eyes made him look like Uchiha Itachi, Really Dangerous Missing-nin, instead of Uchiha Itachi, Who Is Actually Pretty Nice After All If You Overlook Some Things. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"No, I'm just bored. Want to go blow something up?" Hikari asked, darting over to bounce on Itachi's bed.

Realizing the futility of trying to get Hikari to leave him alone, Itachi sat up with a sigh. "At two in the morning?" he queried.

"Yeah, it'll be awesome! We could go out for sushi afterward, it could be like, you know, a date or something. Pleeeease?"

…

"Ooh, ooh, watch this one! _Katsu!_"

Light flashed through the entire sky as the blast went off, briefly casting the rocky ground below into wildly contrasting shadows. Hikari shaded her eyes with one hand as she laughed.

Itachi smiled back in spite of himself, caught up in her infectious enthusiasm.

"Oh, hey, there's a little town over there," Hikari said, pointing as the bird swooped down.

"Hikari, you're not…"

Hikari poked him playfully in the ribs. "Of course not, silly, what did you think? They might have some chocolate or something!"

During his years as a missing-nin, Itachi had discovered that most such persons had retained some kind of personal code; for example, he avoided injuring innocent bystanders whenever possible, and Kisame had once admitted that had never committed an actual theft.

Thus, he was a little surprised with the alacrity with which Hikari broke into a candy store. "So, what do you like, Itachi?" she asked, climbing down off the roof their bird had landed on and preparing to blast through a window.

"Chocolate, I suppose," Itachi replied, following after her.

He quickly realized he would have to be a little more specific. By the time they left almost an hour later, they were laden down with more kinds of candy than he had ever known existed. While he had mostly chosen exotic chocolates and traditional sweets, Hikari grabbed everything that was brightly colored.

Her kisses tasted like strawberries as the dawn broke above them.


	12. In Which Hikari is a Good Sister

[A/N: Sorry about it being so long since I've updated! Hopefully I'll be able to keep up a little bit better with the next few chapters.]

Chapter 12: In Which Hikari is a Good Sister

A few weeks after that, Hikari and Konan were busily going through the huge pile of wedding-planning magazines that Konan had collected. Konan had gotten into the habit of leaving them in strategic places around the base, in hopes that Pein would get the hint. So far, he hadn't, or he was keeping it a very good secret if he had.

"Hey, look at this one," Konan said. " 'Planning a wedding around the Chuunin Exams'. I know neither of you are doing anything like that, but it might help with your situation anyway…"

As Hikari had quickly figured out, trying to arrange a wedding when both parties involved were wanted criminals was just as difficult as it sounded, if not more. First there was the problem of finding someone who was both not inclined to turn them in and possessed of the authority to perform a marriage; contrary to what Hikari had hoped, Pein couldn't marry them, not validly anyway. Then there was the problem of finding a place to get married in that wouldn't attract attention or give away the location of their base, while having enough room for the rest of the Akatsuki as well as Hikari's sisters. Luckily Itachi wasn't a picky sort of person, as far as the wedding was concerned.

Taking the magazine, Hikari started to read the article Konan had pointed out. "Hey, when are the Chuunin Exams supposed to be, anyway?"

"In just a couple weeks, I think," Konan replied. "They're supposed to be in Konoha again this year."

"Hey, really? Just a sec, okay?" Hikari dashed off, leaving Konan to wonder briefly what was up before going back to dreamily staring at a frothy confection of a wedding dress in one of the advertisements.

"Hey Itachi can we have fireworks at the wedding do you know when the Chuunin Exams are is anybody from Iwa going to be entering want to go watch with me?"

Itachi looked up as Hikari burst into the room, and took a few seconds to sort out the questions she had  
>rattled off before replying. "I don't see why not; two weeks and three days; I don't know but Sasori can probably tell you; if we don't have a mission by then."<p>

...

Two weeks later, in Konoha:

Kakashi stifled a yawn as he surveyed the long line of entrants who had yet to be registered for the exams. At this rate he would be here for hours yet, with nothing to do except watching the Chuunin hopefuls while they signed in to make sure no one was smuggling anything. Anko was looking just as bored as she signed visas and stamped entrance forms. They had hoped to go out to lunch together, but it was looking more as if it would be dinnertime by the time they were through.

Doing his best to feign a small amount of interest (it wouldn't do to have any of the visitors think Konoha's security was lax) he scanned the line again. Everyone seemed clear, predictably.

Suddenly he gasped in surprise as he caught a glimpse of an all-too-familiar head of long blonde hair. He had a spread of kunai out ready to throw before the girl turned, and just barely stopped himself in time to keep himself from skewering her when he realized that it wasn't Hikari.

Anko hadn't noticed the blonde and her team yet, and Kakashi wondered if he would get a chance to slip out before the fireworks started. It didn't look likely, but he kept an eye on the door just in case.

The blonde girl, he noted after a few minutes of observation, was clearly several years older than Hikari, as well as a bit taller, and her hair was a slightly deeper shade of blonde. Her Iwa headband was unslashed, and she wore a brown jacket with the Deidara clan mushroom cloud emblem embroidered on the right sleeve. She was followed by two other girls and a boy (Kakashi thought it was a boy—his hair was shorter than the others'), similarly dressed but toting weapon pouches.

Well, this was a disaster in the making if Kakashi had ever seen one. Konoha would be lucky if they got away with the arena still in one piece.

Still _mostly _in one piece, he amended as the Iwa team reached the desk where Anko was. Kakashi began looking for a solid object to duck behind when the explosives and dango sticks started flying. Unfortunately, the solidest object in the room was the desk, and that was probably going to be the most hazardous as well.

"Passports please," Anko said automatically, not even looking up as she pulled out three more entry forms. Calmly stamping the passports with her personal seal, she looked up as she handed them back. "And your names—"

Thankfully the Iwa group was nearly the last in line, as there were less other people about to crowd the room. Anko jumped back, toppling over the chair she had been sitting in, and whipped out a handful of shuriken.

The Iwa jounin didn't look exactly surprised, and to her credit didn't immediately retaliate and escalate the situation, although she took up a defensive posture as Anko prepared to throw. The three genin ducked out of the older girl's way.

As it looked as if he was the only one with a chance at averting a war at the moment, Kakashi jumped into the fray and grabbed Anko's wrist before she could let the shuriken fly.

"What are you doing, Kakashi?" Anko demanded, reaching for a kunai with her free hand. "She's—"

"Not a missing-nin," Kakashi interrupted quietly.

"I think you must have mistaken me for someone else..." the Iwa jounin cut in.

"Ah, yes, sorry about that," Kakashi said, wondering whether it was safe to let go of Anko yet. She didn't like it when people interfered with her business, and she might just make him her next target. "I hope you don't mind my asking," he continued, letting go of Anko as she kicked him in the shin and jumping back before she could decide to stab him with the kunai she was still holding, "but are you related to Deidara Hikari, by any chance?"

"Sister, sister, sister, and cousin," the girl replied, indicating herself, the other two girls and then the boy. "Why, has she gotten herself in trouble again?"

Kakashi considered telling her that her sister had gotten engaged to the most dangerous missing-nin in several decade's worth of Bingo Books but decided against it. "You could say that," he replied as Anko righted her chair and retrieved the entry forms that had gotten flung off the desk in the confusion.

"Sorry," she said curtly.

"It happens a lot," the Deidara girl said graciously. "Comes of being in a clan that produces so many missing-nin. I mean, I'd be S-ranked, but I blow things up legally."

"Sure," Anko said. "Your names please?" she continued, picking up a pencil to fill out the forms with.

"Kaede," the girl replied. "And these are Junko and Sayuri, and that's Hayate."

Having two girls and a boy on a team instead of the reverse was a bit unusual, but Kakashi remembered that the Deidara clan was matriarchal, which probably explained it.

He just hoped that having four of her relatives in Konoha wouldn't attract Hikari.

...

A few days later:

"...and so then there was the _bear_ and we were all in the tree, and Kuro-chan said if we survived she was never going camping with us again, and Kagome-nee-chan said she would so because we were so much fun, and then it started climbing after us and if Airi-chan hadn't blown up the branch it was balancing on I don't know _what _we would have done."

"Sounds harrowing," Itachi remarked, scanning the scenery below.

"Uh-huh, it was! But Kuro-chan did come camping with us again after that. She said that since we'd had a disaster like that all our camping trips after that would be perfect. Of course, they weren't, but aside from that thing with the spider they were pretty nice. Camping in Iwa's great, except in the winter, it's all snowy, and then in the spring it all melts so it's all muddy and icky. But it's really nice in the summer are we there yet?"

"Another couple of hours," Itachi replied, after realizing that she had asked a question. "Are you sure this is such a good idea?"

"Well, with the truce agreed on for the Chuunin Exams, it's not like they can throw us out unless we start anything," Hikari pointed out.

Itachi was pretty sure they would end up starting _something_, no matter how hard they tried to avoid it, because frankly Hikari attracted that sort of thing. It would be boring if she didn't.

"Besides, maybe I can help them out," Hikari continued.

"How so?" Itachi asked.

"I dunno. I was thinking we could find the answers for that written test thingy for them."

Accomplishing that would involve breaking and entering, violation of a truce, espionage, and false pretenses, plus any number of other things. "I'll consider it," Itachi said. "How did you pass it when you entered the exams?"

"Are you insinuating I didn't know the answers?" Hikari gasped in mock horror.

"Most of the problems are Jounin-level," Itachi pointed out. "Nobody's supposed to know the answers." He knew this from the one—and only—time he had ever proctored in the Exams. He had sworn never to do it again afterwards; his going missing-nin a few months later had been a convenient excuse.

"Okay, okay," Hikari said, apparently mollified. "I waited until the kid next to me finished, and then talked him into switching papers with me."

"You 'talked' him into it?"

"I said he'd be breathing through a hole in his chest if he didn't," Hikari clarified. "Anyway, then Moriko-nee-chan made a disturbance, and I got one of the proctors out of the way long enough for Kuro-chan—she's not Clan, I told you that, right? She's just a friend—to copy down the answers on her and Moriko-nee-chan's papers."

Itachi frowned. "When did you take the Exams?" he asked.

"Seven years ago," Hikari replied. "Why?"

"Did you take them here?"

"Yeah," Hikari said. "How come, did you—wait, I remember now! You were the overprotective one! With the brother!"

Itachi did remember scaring off several Iwa girls from a local playground after being briefed on how borderline psychopathic most Deidara females were. "That was you, I take it."

"Yeah, yeah. What was your brother's name, Shouta?"

"Sasuke."

"He was so cute when he was little! His hair was all fluffy and sticky-out-y. What's he doing now?"

_Serving as the apprentice of one of the most dangerous people on the continent so he can become powerful enough to kill me. _"He's...studying outside the village."

"Oh, okay. So were you doing anything else back at those exams besides hovering over your little brother?"

Itachi winced a little at the memory of being tackled by a screaming blonde girl and hitting his head on one of the desks. He hadn't even liked his cousins hugging him back then, so some random girl grabbing him had been frankly horrifying. "I helped out with proctoring," he replied, suddenly feeling very glad he'd had his ANBU mask on back then.

"Did you see me?" Hikari asked, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

"I guess I must have," Itachi replied, not wanting to tell her that he had refused to ever proctor again for fear another Deidara kunoichi might turn up and pounce on him.

"Funny how those things work, huh?" Hikari said.

"Yes," Itachi said. "We'll reach Konoha in just a few minutes," he added, to get Hikari off the subject of their pasts. There were a lot of things he didn't like remembering.

[A/N: So that's that. At some point I might make a one-shot about Hikari's Chuunin Exams. I hope you liked the chapter!]


	13. In Which Konoha is Not Destroyed

[A/N: Just started trying to figure out how many Tropes this thing falls into. There's a lot. Also, I have yet another what-story-to-write-next poll up, so please vote!]

Chapter 13: In Which Konoha is (Surprisingly Enough) Not Destroyed

"Well," Kakashi said after he and Anko had checked in the last few groups of genin and straightened up the room, "that went...much better than it could have." Anko shot him a look that bode ill if he didn't make it immediately clear that he wasn't criticizing her, so he went on. "I mean, she didn't mean any harm, and there wasn't a fight or anything..."

"Just so long as your _ex-fiancee_ doesn't come to cheer for them, I'm happy," Anko said as she locked the door. "So, where are we going for dinner? There's a new dango place I want to try afterwards."

Kakashi had rarely been so happy to change the subject.

When he walked her back to her apartment later, after a nice dinner at one of the Akimichi restaurants and dessert at three separate sweets stands, it was quite dark, and beginning to get cold even though it was summer. After Anko had let herself in, Kakashi hurried across town to his own apartment.

He had to go past the office again to get to his apartment complex, and paused when something just seemed a bit off with one of the windows. Curious, he headed over for a closer look.

Whoever had decided to attempt to break in (probably looking for the master copy of the written exam) had done a painfully clumsy job of it; he almost wondered whether one of the entering genin had done it on a dare. None of the chakra alarms had been disabled, and there were visible marks on the sill where a kunai or something had been shoved under the window to pry it open.

Kakashi closed and sealed the window so nobody else would get any ideas, then unlocked the door to check the desk. It was a very expensive desk, and the higher-ups would be furious if some genin ruined it trying to find a secret drawer. Even if they did start ripping panels apart they wouldn't find anything; it was concealed by several jounin-level genjutsu.

Nothing seemed amiss with the desk; perhaps whoever had gotten the window open had been scared off before starting to hack at it. _Good thing, too, I probably would have had to pay for it,_ Kakashi thought as he locked up again. He took a brief look around on his way home for any stray foreign genin, but didn't spot any. _Well, at least there's no way these exams can get messed up worse than the last time we had them here._

...

Hikari stared blankly at the paper on the table between them, tilting her head so she could see it closer to right-side-up. "Wow, that looks even harder than when I took it," she remarked as she took another bite of dango.

Itachi nodded as he began filling in one of the answers. "Ibiki makes it harder every time it comes around to Konoha," he said. "It's a matter of pride or something. How are you going to get this to your sister?"

"Don't worry about that," Hikari said blithely. "I'll handle it."

The last time Hikari had tried to 'handle' something she had almost gotten herself digested by a toad, but Itachi refrained from mentioning that as it had been partially his fault for threatening her back then, anyway.

He had been to this particular sweets shop once before with Kisame, in their first attempt to retrieve the Kyuubi. However, he hadn't actually had a chance to eat what he had purchased, as Sasuke and his teacher had happened along just then. Wondering whether or not the wagashi would have been any good had been bothering him for years, but he was glad to finally conclude that it was quite tasty. It also had twenty-four-hour service, which was why he and Hikari were there instead of on a bench in a park somewhere.

The two of them had discarded their cloaks and hats before entering Konoha, and Itachi had cast a genjutsu to conceal the slashes in their headbands and make Hikari's appear to have a leaf symbol. If no one looked to closely at the paper they were working on, they could just be two Chuunin or Jounin brushing up for one of the occasional proficiency exams. There wasn't anybody in the shop besides them, but Itachi knew better than to get careless.

"You're awfully good at this," Hikari said as she watched him quickly filling in the answers. Some of the situational problems required more than a few paragraphs to answer properly, and the mathematical problems were long and convoluted.

"I passed when I was ten," Itachi explained, pausing in his calculation of a trajectory formula.

"Oh really? I was eleven," Hikari said. "Natsumi-nee-chan didn't pass till she was fourteen, 'cause she and cousin Aiko kept fighting over the boy in their team. I guess they went a little overboard, and he married some civilian girl a year or so back."

Itachi wondered how she still kept up on the family news when she was a missing-nin, but decided not to ask. The Deidara clan was big enough that it could practically have its own newspaper. "There, all done," he announced, setting down the pencil and stretching his tired fingers.

"Great!" Hikari chirped. "Can you make another copy?"

"Hikari, you're only helping the one team, I don't think you need another copy."

"But I have a _plan,_" Hikari wheedled, raising her eyebrows a little and pouting in a very hopeful-puppy-dog manner. It was hard to resist. "Pleeeeease?"

...

Hikari yawned languidly as she lounged on the roof of the Hokage tower the next morning. She was pretty sure everyone knew she was there (although they likely didn't recognize her), but no one had tried to make her go somewhere else yet. It was one of the best sunbathing spots she'd found in a long time; Ame was so overcast that she had gotten awfully pale there.

She was waiting for her sisters and cousins to leave their hotel for one of the training fields, but either they were sleeping in or Junko and Sayuri were fighting over clothes again. The latter was more likely. Hikari had gotten in some almighty rows with them over her favorite skirt, which she had of course abandoned in their tender clutches when she left. They had probably worn it out by now—her siblings were very rough on their clothes. She had been too, but not as nearly as bad as they were.

Finally, when she was beginning to wonder whether they had blown up their room and been dragged off to jail, the door opened and Kaede stepped out. Hikari stopped lounging and ducked behind a promontory as Kaede looked up and down the street. Her eldest sister would lecture for _hours_ if she found her here.

She just didn't understand some things, like following your heart even if it meant you ended up blowing up random buildings all over the continent. Kaede also didn't get that going after off-limits things made it lots more fun; blasting mines and transport tunnels was really pretty boring. Rock wasn't very flammable, although it did kind of make a cool noise. Sort of a _'kroosh!'_

Kaede headed down the street to the shopping district after a few moments, although she kept looking suspiciously at the roof where Hikari was. As an elder sister, Kaede's mischief sensors were hair-trigger. Hikari had hardly ever been able to sneak out of the house when Kaede was around.

Kaede was followed through the doorway by her genin students, who, since they were all younger siblings, were not nearly so highly attuned to the possibility of mayhem in their general vicinity. Junko had her hair twined up in a thick braid around her head, so Hikari took aim and threw.

...

"Ow! Hey, who threw that?"

"I don't know, what is it?"

"Let me see!"

Kakashi glanced across the square at the sudden flurry of motion involving the Deidara team. He had vowed to keep a close eye on them ever since discovering the break-in at the office. Right now it didn't seem that there would be bloodshed in the offing, but he did wonder who it was that could be chucking paper airplanes about at potentially hostile guests. He would have guessed Naruto, but Naruto was still off training with Jiraiya. Of course, Konohamaru was following in his esteemed predecessor's footsteps, so that was a definite possibility.

While the Deidara team were still occupied examining the paper that had been thrown at them, Kakashi estimated its trajectory and hopped up to a nearby roof to look at where he thought it might have come from. He looked over at the Hokage Tower just in time to see a familiar length of blond hair trailing behind someone who had just jumped off.

Quickly deciding that if he went to get Anko it would turn out to be too great a delay, Kakashi took off after Deidara Hikari. Hopefully Anko would be understanding that Kakashi wasn't chasing his ex-fiancee through any desire of his own.

Hikari headed through the village with a speed that did not bode well. Clearly she had been hanging around long enough to plan her route thoroughly, or she wasn't here alone. Not at all liking the idea of taking on Hikari as well as her new fiance, Kakashi dropped down to street-level to perform a quick summoning.

"Pakkun," he said once the little pug had appeared, "I need you to go get Anko and tell her I'm after Deidara Hikari. Uchiha Itachi might be with her, so tell Anko to bring whatever reinforcements she thinks might be necessary."

Pakkun nodded and dashed off as Kakashi took to the roofs again.

...

"I got it to them," Hikari reported, dropping down beside Itachi on the branch he was sitting on and surveying the gathering of foreign Jounin teachers. "I just hope they realized what it was. How's it going here?"

"The bidding for the other answer key is up to 6,728,536.5 ryo now," Itachi replied. He had assumed a slight henge so that he wouldn't be recognized, and Hikari decided that he looked adorable with blue eyes. "How big of a wedding were you wanting to have, anyway?"

"I don't know, medium-ish, I guess, but a little extra's always nice. How much longer do you think this will take?" Hikari asked, glancing back towards the village walls. She had a sneaking suspicion that she was being followed.

"Not much longer. It looks like a group of them are forming a coalition to outbid everyone else."

"Okay, good, because I think we're going to have to clear out of here pretty fast once we're done. Hey people!" she shouted, standing up and whistling with two fingers in her mouth to get everyone's attention, "hurry it up a little bit, okay? The first test starts in less than three hours!"

The bidding quickly began again and Hikari sat back down on the branch. "We're not going to get in any trouble for this, right?" she asked.

Itachi handed her a heavy sheaf of papers covered with small print. "The disclaimer is thirty times longer than the answer key itself," he said, "to be signed in triplicate by the purchasing party: one for them, one for us, and one for the Hokage's desk where I'm sure it will be discovered sometime within the next twenty years."

Hikari concurred with this—Tsunade was not exactly a neat freak, as she had discovered when faced with the Hogake's desk some time ago. The closet had been worse, though. "Let's head into the village once this is done," she said. "I found a chocolate shop where we can lie low for a while."

After about ten more minutes, the bidding was over and the winning group of Jounin handed over their pooled funds. While the purchasers were signing, Hikari examined their earnings. "This is a lot, you know," she said. "Who carries around 8 million ryo, anyway?"

"People who are going to the Chuunin exams, for one," Itachi replied, once he had examined the signatures to determine whether they were satisfactory. He handed one of the stacks of paper along with the answer key to the group's spokesman, who promptly vanished along with his compatriots, leaving Hikari and Itachi alone in the clearing.

"Wow," Hikari remarked, riffling through a thick wad of bills, "I wonder how much chocolate we could buy with this?"

"Enough to kill us both, I'm sure," Itachi said.

"Want to find out?" Hikari suggested.

"No," Itachi said firmly. "We need to leave some money for the wedding, remember?"

...

Because of all the unfamiliar feedback from so many foreign shinobi being around, it took Kakashi a lot longer than he liked to trace Hikari's trail to a clearing outside the village. Anko arrived a few moments later, carrying Pakkun.

"What's going on?" she demanded. "There's nobody here."

"The trail was to fuzzy for me to get here before they went somewhere else," Kakashi said. "But it looks like they..." he frowned. "No, that can't be right."

"Well then we're both wrong," Pakkun said, looking up from snuffling along the ground, "because it sure seems to me like they went back into the village."

"Let's go!" Anko said, dashing back towards the gate.

...

Hikari paused with a piece of chocolate halfway to her mouth as Anko and Kakashi dashed past them. "Huh. I wonder what they're in such a hurry for."

"I wonder indeed..." Itachi said as Kakashi skidded to a halt at the corner and called Anko back. "But I think we'll find out momentarily."

"What are you doing here?" Kakashi demanded, stopping in front of them with a spread of kunai readied in each hand.

"We wanted to watch the Exams," Hikari replied, her big blue eyes wide and innocent.

"Well, you can't," Kakashi said, "so just—"

"Kakashi-san," Itachi cut in calmly, "according to the truce automatically put into place during the Chuunin Exams, you cannot bar anyone from the village unless they cause trouble. Nothing's on fire, nobody's dead or even mentally traumatized, and we actually paid for this chocolate, so what are you going to accuse us of?"

"Trying to steal my—" Anko began shouting, but Kakashi cut her off.

"Don't worry—we'll think of something," he snapped before stalking off with an indignant Anko in tow.


	14. In Which Nothing Goes According to Plan

[A/N: I'm a horrible updater, I'm so sorry! I got a little (okay, very) stuck with this arc since it was originally supposed to be a lot shorter; all my outline said was 'Chuunin Exams'. Hopefully things will pick up soon! It's about to get really good...]

Chapter 14: In Which Nothing Goes According to Plan

Over the next few hours, it became clear that Konoha had gone into an official 'panic mode' to brace themselves for the onslaught they obviously believed was imminent. Most of the foreign ninja did not appear to have noticed this, but even those who did had no idea of the cause.

Kakashi and Anko had been assigned to keep an eye on Itachi and Hikari, who were currently sitting on a roof with a clear view into the room being used for the written exam. Kakashi was sure that something funny was going on with the test, but neither of the missing-nin were giving any kind of signals to anyone inside, nor was anyone inside looking out. Itachi and Hikari didn't seem frustrated by the surveillance, either, although Hikari occasionally turned to stick her tongue out at Anko.

About halfway through the time allotted for the written test, one of the proctors left the exam building and waved to Kakashi from the street below. Kakashi promptly jumped down to see what the problem was; maybe they could chase Itachi and his girlfriend off now.

"What is it?" Kakashi asked the chuunin.

"Well..." the other hedged. "We kind of have a problem, but..."

"But what?"

"They have answer keys."

Kakashi's subsequent incredulous shout was loud enough to warrant Hikari looking curiously down at him over the edge of the roof. "They have _what!_"

"Answer keys. Two of them."

"Let me guess, the Deidara team has one," Kakashi said. The master copy of this year's Exams had been supposed to be nigh-impossible to get at, but then when Uchiha Itachi was involved, 'nigh-impossible' translated to 'might actually take him more than two minutes.'

"Right. The other is being passed around by four or five other teams. But, the problem is that they're not making any effort to hide them at all."

Kakashi frowned. "How is that a problem? They use the answer key, you catch them cheating and throw them out. It's not that hard."

The chuunin's hitherto amiable gaze seemed to chill slightly at this point. "Actually," he said, in a tone Kakashi could have made popsicles on (Kakashi made note of this in case of an emergency later in the summer), "it is that hard. The current edition of Konoha's Chuunin Exam Rules—which happens to be the nineteenth, by the way—states that one point is removed for each time we _catch_ someone cheating. If no effort is being made to hide it, we can only count it once."

"So what do you want me to do?" Kakashi asked, a little annoyed that he hadn't spotted this loophole when he had been taking the Chuunin Exams. He'd actually had to do some _work_ to pass.

The chuunin sighed. "I don't know. Just—try to keep things from getting any worse, okay?"

Uchiha Itachi and Deidara Hikari put together were practically the definition of 'worse', but Kakashi tried to look reassuring all the same. "We'll do everything we can," he said, fully meaning what he said. He just didn't think 'everything' would be all that much.

By the time he got back to the roof, the pair of internationally notorious lovebirds had vanished, and Anko along with them. Being by nature a calm, levelheaded person, Kakashi only spent about fifteen seconds praying that Anko hadn't done anything stupid (he loved her but he was honest with himself) before hurrying in the direction their chakra signatures led.

He found himself in one of the most expensive restaurants in Konoha—the one that Anko had been trying to get him to take her to for the past several months. However, losing one-third of his teacher's pay after Sasuke's departure had made things a little tight for Kakashi. Due to the fact that he'd already taken Anko to the best place he could afford last week, at the moment he wouldn't have enough to spare to pay for even the tip in a place like this.

Kakashi entered the establishment a little self-consciously, knowing that his shinobi fatigues would be quite out of place in a black-tie place like this. However, the Copy Ninja's fame preceded him, and no one dared to react unfavorably to his appearance.

He was looking around at the shadowed booths, trying to spot Uchiha Itachi and his fiancee, when a hand grabbed his arm and pulled him into a seat.

"Wha—oh, Anko," Kakashi said, putting back the kunai he had pulled out. "What's up?"

"Shhh!" Anko whispered firmly. "They're right over there," she added, pointing across the restaurant to where Itachi and Hikari were sitting. They were also, to Kakashi's surprise, engaged in what could only be called a flagrant public display of affection: Itachi was leaning across the table to (presumably) kiss Hikari, although Kakashi couldn't tell because the girl's hair was in the way. Maybe they were just doing it to flaunt their right to be where they were, and it was certainly working; Anko was glaring daggers at them and was obviously dying to upgrade to the real thing.

A waiter appeared silently beside their table. He looked faintly disapproving of Kakashi and Anko's casual attire but wisely didn't say anything as he handed each of them a menu. "I will be back for your orders shortly," he said before heading over to another table.

Kakashi looked at the prices and winced. Anko had a similarly pained expression on her face as she perused her menu. "I don't have my wallet," she whispered finally.

"Well, I have mine," Kakashi said, "but that doesn't do any good since it doesn't actually have anything_ in_ it."

And only three days until payday. Couldn't Itachi and his fiancee have had the courtesy to choose a cheaper restaurant to hide out in?

…...

"Soooo," Hikari whispered into Itachi's ear, "what's the plan?"

"I'm glad that the word is in your vocabulary," Itachi replied, "but you're the one who wanted to come, so you tell me."

Hikari sighed—it had been worth a shot, but Itachi wasn't the type to help with something like this unless asked directly, along with pleas, bribes, and promises to never ever do anything to his hair ever again. "My plan kind of had a blank spot in between 'give Nee-chan's team the test answers' and 'watch them blow things up'."

"I see," Itachi said. "Well, one will probably lead to the other, so what do you want to do now?"

"I dunno, I'm just bored. When does the next test start?"

"After the lunch break, so about another hour and a half."

"Oh, okay. How about we try to bother my ex and his girlfriend?"

Itachi didn't think Kakashi really counted as an 'ex', not that he had much experience with such matters, but he was a little bored as well. "If you want to."

…...

Unfortunately for the restaurant's upscale atmosphere, Anko was the first to notice the charmingly detailed clay sparrow that hopped onto the table and began chirping at her and Kakashi. Her reaction could be placed in the category of 'over', and Kakashi ducked as the table flew halfway across the room. Anko had been aiming for the adjacent booth, where Itachi and his fiancee were sitting, but she overshot and the table landed with a crash somewhere in the back of the restaurant.

"Whoa," Hikari gasped. "No wonder he likes her."

Even Itachi looked mildly surprised. "Impressive," he remarked, which (for him) was the equivalent of cheering and hurling confetti.

A few seconds later, a waiter stormed over. "What's going on here?" he demanded.

"She was trying to blow us all up!" Anko shouted, pointing at Hikari.

"Hey wait a minute, you were the only one who did any damage!" Hikari yelled back, jumping to her feet. "Didn't you even read the note before going berserk?"

"Who's berserk?" Anko snarled, and Kakashi grabbed her before she could make a lunge at Hikari and Itachi's table.

"Now, now you can't really say that _doesn't_ describe you at the moment," Kakashi pointed out soothingly, trying to get her to calm down enough that they could move the at-this-point-inevitable fight out into the street. "What note?" he added curiously.

"The one the bird was holding," Hikari said. "We were going to treat you to lunch, but _noooo_, Anko had to try and squash me with a table!"

Anko took a deep breath and began to relax. "Kakashi, you can let go of me now," she said with deliberate calm.

"Well, okay..." Kakashi said a little reluctantly, but obligingly set her down and took several steps back as Anko stalked towards her nemesis (granted, Anko was probably the only one who thought of Hikari this way).

"I challenge you to a duel," Anko snapped, jabbing her finger at Hikari's face.

"Is that going to break the truce, Itachi?" Hikari asked, and fairly beamed when her fiance shook his head. "Okay, then as the challenged party, I get to choose the location and conditions..."

…...

"You know," Kakashi remarked several minutes later, setting his pencil down after making several tallies on the scoresheet, "This is a little bit anticlimactic. I kind of thought when my girlfriend challenged an Akatsuki member to a duel that it'd be a little more _dramatic_, you know?"

"Hikari did offer to play Duel Monsters," Itachi pointed out, reaching out to take a plate of shrimp nigiri that had somehow made it past the two combatants unscathed.

"Yeah, somehow a children's card game doesn't really sound that much more extreme than a _conveyor sushi eating contest_."

Itachi shrugged, then turned his attention back to the two girls at the counter. "Suit yourself."

Kakashi still couldn't quite wrap his head around how it had come to this: if someone had asked him that morning 'what are you planning on doing this afternoon?' he would never in a million years have guessed that he would be sitting next to Uchiha Itachi as they kept score for their respective dates. Something was really wrong with the world—he was even trying to make conversation with one of the most lethal missing-nin ever to exist!

Sighing, he pushed that thought out of his mind as best he could, hoping that this whole embarrassing mess wasn't just another of Itachi's genjutsus. _Scratch that, he'd never think of something this ridiculous,_ Kakashi decided. "What's the score?" he asked.

"Hikari is at 42 now," Itachi replied. "What about Anko?"

"She's at 46," Kakashi said. _Thank goodness she's still ahead, he thought in relief._ The agreed-on terms had stated that the loser paid the bill, and at this rate Kakashi would probably have to put his dogs up as collateral to help pay it off. "Go for it, Anko!" he said encouragingly.

Hikari paused between mouthfuls of sushi long enough to glare at Itachi. "Hey, aren't you going to cheer for me?" she pouted.

"Hurrah," Itachi said flatly, taking another plate of sushi that had slipped past Hikari while she was distracted.

"There, there's the enthusiasm I was looking for," Hikari mumbled around a mouthful of eel rolls.

Anko had remained silent through this exchange, and her score went up by three compared to Hikari's one. _We might have a chance after all_, Kakashi thought.

"Hey, what's going on in here?" Inoichi said as he entered the conveyor sushi restaurant, followed by his two friends. "Oh look, it's the Merry Widow and her new fiance."

_Forget it, everything hates me._ "What 'Merry Widow'? We were never even married, and I'm not dead!" Kakashi protested.

"You might not want to keep reminding Itachi of that," Shikaku remarked as Chouza attempted to pick up a plate of salmon rolls only to have his hand slapped away by Anko.

Kakashi opened his mouth for a chilling retort, but before he could say anything everyone in the room jumped as a deep, resounding explosion shook the restaurant.

"Ooh, sounds like the second test started!" Hikari exclaimed. "Hayate's in good form today."

_Goodbye, peaceful intact village_, Kakashi thought, and went back to tallying plates of sushi.

[A/N: Wow, it's been more than 18 months since I finished the last chapter! I hope people are still reading this, and I promise I'll work more on it in future. Recently I've been reading some glorious crack fanfics that got my comedy juices flowing again.]


	15. In Which Chickens are Counted

[A/N: I was originally planning to start a new fanfic for NaNoWriMo, but instead I decided to focus on the ones already going for a while. I'll probably start the new story once school lets out for Christmas.]

**Chapter 15: In Which Chickens are Counted Before They Hatch**

To Kakashi's eternal gratitude, Anko was summoned to help with monitoring about an hour into the second test, so she and Hikari agreed to end their 'duel'. Anko had managed to remain ahead, which meant that she and Kakashi were not doomed to pay the exorbitant bill. Between the two of them, the girls had eaten enough to put Fujiwara's Sushi in the black for the next decade or so, especially since around midway through the duel the chefs had gotten wise and started putting out the kinds of sushi that rich people ate to show off how rich they were, and Anko and Hikari had been in too much of a hurry to check price tags.

There was one side benefit of the conveyor sushi battle: Hikari was so sick from over-eating that she was forced to recover in a hotel room for the next several days. This kept Itachi off the streets as well, and since the Deidara team was also recuperating from the second stage of the Exams, there wasn't much likelihood of the two groups running into each other for a while. Soon, Kakashi and Anko began to relax—with a little luck, Konoha might not end up turning into a disaster zone after all.

…...

"Hey Itachi, let's go shopping!"

Itachi had become accustomed enough to Hikari's behaviour not to succumb to a violent reflex when she pounced on him and threw her arms around his neck, but he still stiffened slightly at the contact. Hikari let go of him a few moments later, and he took this opportunity to set down the steaming teakettle—he had been in the process of making his fiancee another cup of mint tea, but considering her regained perkiness she probably didn't need that now. "What do you want to go shopping for?"

"I have to get souvenirs for Sasori and Kisame and Konan and everybody, of course!" Hikari announced, adjusting her pink shirt to smooth the wrinkles from her pouncing. "Besides, we've got nothing to do until the finals."

"Haven't got anything," Itachi corrected automatically, getting out some green tea for himself so as not to waste the hot water.

"See, you agree with me. What do you think Konan would like? I figure Sasori would like it if I got him some of those little bitty screws he's always losing, and I'm not quite sure what Kisame likes but I bet if I get something fish-related he'll be happy..."

"Are you sure you're feeling well enough?" Itachi had been hoping that Hikari's illness after the eating contest would give him an excuse to keep her out of trouble for the rest of the time they were in Konoha. He had agreed to this (admittedly ridiculous and very bad by Akatsuki standards) idea to make Hikari happy, but now he was mainly focused on making sure things didn't get out of hand.

"Oh yeah, I feel fine, watch this!" Hikari chirped, bending over backwards in a yoga pose that did very, very good things for her figure.

_That is quite a persuasive argument,_ Itachi thought, admiring her form as he sipped his tea. "Whatever you want," he said. "I'll show you around the shopping district."

…...

_Two hours later..._

A bell tinkled Itachi followed Hikari into the last shop, a small, out-of-the-way boutique that carried the sort of cute but eccentric things that Konan liked. Of course, if Hikari had her way they would be shopping for the next three days, but Itachi had eventually put his proverbial ninja-sandalled foot down.

It had been so long since he had gone shopping with a girl that he had completely forgotten what it was like, which was why it had taken so little convincing earlier. If he had remembered, for example, the time when the female member of his genin team had dragged the rest of them through the shops and made them comment on whether they thought the magenta or fuchsia hair ornament looked better on her, he might have reconsidered. (After five hours of discussion, during which Itachi had begun calculating how he could most efficiently kill himself with a brooch from a nearby display, she had eventually settled on the carmine one instead.)

Hikari did try to be considerate, but that didn't really do anything to change the fact that she was having a great deal of fun, and Itachi wasn't (not that he wasn't used to this state of affairs). Even Kakashi and Anko were nowhere to be seen, which was unfortunate since messing with them had proved to be rather amusing.

The store they had just entered was too small to have anywhere to sit, so Itachi stood near Hikari and tried futilely not to look too intimidating. At least this place didn't have enough stock for Hikari to be there terribly long. Almost immediately after he thought this, Itachi realized that it was an optimistic assumption and those always seemed to go badly for him, but miraculously it turned out to be true this time. After only about ten minutes Hikari had chosen a hat that she decided Konan would like. Itachi went outside to wait while she paid for it—the poor shopgirl had fled to the stockroom almost as soon as she caught sight of Itachi, so Hikari probably wouldn't be able to actually make her purchase until he left.

"Okay, done!" Hikari chirped as she bounced out of the store a few minutes later. "Now let's go to the market and get something to eat!"

"I'm not sure that's the best idea," Itachi hedged. "It might be better to have something delivered to the hotel room." The market was sure to be crowded at this time of day, and while Itachi had managed to minimize the number of people he had run into who might recognize him so far, he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep that up.

"But we've been doing that for days, it's way too boring!" Hikari protested, grabbing Itachi by the sleeve and heading determinedly off down the street. "Come on, let's go!"

"The market is the other way," Itachi pointed out after she had dragged him halfway to the corner.

Hikari paused briefly, then turned around, pulling Itachi along with her. "Let's go!"

…

Ten minutes later, nothing had happened and Itachi was beginning to relax. With a little luck, he would be able to get Hikari out of Konoha without further incident. Honestly, he couldn't even remember why he had agreed to this silly escapade in the first place…

"Ooh, look at all this!" Hikari squealed in delight, darting back and forth between the booths of food. Itachi rolled his eyes a little; considering how many bags of food and ingredients he was already carrying for her, they would be well-supplied all the way back to Rain Country, with more to share once they got there.

Still, considering the kind of life they led, it was best that she be happy while she could, so Itachi followed her to the next booth without complaint.

"Mochi, mochi mochi mochi…" Hikari hummed cheerfully, weaving her way through the crowd to get to a sweets booth. Itachi, being burdened by shopping bags and not wanting to create a panic by outing himself with his shinobi skills, followed a little too slowly and lost her in the press.

Konoha was much brighter this time of year than Ame, and the summer sun made Itachi's head hurt, straining his already-worsening vision. Ducking out of the crowded market square to a shaded corner where he could survey the area, Itachi scanned around for his wayward fiancee. Once he caught sight of the tell-tale bright blond ponytail, he slipped behind stalls to avoid the packed square and made his way to her side.

"Hikari, don't you think you've found plenty for lunch by now?" Itachi pointed out, grabbing her jacket sleeve to get her attention. "Let's go, or else it will be time for dinner once we get any cooking done."

There was a brief pause, in which Itachi waited for the inevitable wheedling that would follow. Then the object of his address turned around, and he knew he had made a mistake.

"Well," Hikari's sister said, looking him up and down, "I can't say I'm sorry to have the attention of someone as good-looking as you, but the fact that you seem to be mistaking me for my kid sister does take some of the spark out of it."

"Um," Itachi said, since his brain seemed to have chosen this moment to take a lunch break. After a few seconds, he realized he was still holding on to Hikari's sister's sleeve (she probably had a name of some kind...Kiku? Kanon?) and snatched his hand back, speaking almost on autopilot as he began mentally running through the by this point immense list of ways this could possibly go wrong. "Yes. Sorry. I'll go now."

"_There_ you are!" Hikari exclaimed, dashing up behind Itachi before he could put his plan of getting out of the market before the sisters met into action. "Hey, let's go home and have lun—oh, hi there, Kaede-nee-san, I didn't notice you for a second."

For the next several seconds, there was an incredibly awkward silence, the kind that tended to occur when missing-nin ran into the more upstanding siblings they had left behind (Itachi could recognize it easily, having encountered it multiple times before). If it hadn't been for the crowd practically holding them in place, Itachi would have taken Hikari and gotten away by now. As it was, he just wished he wasn't between the two girls.

"So...'sup?" Hikari said finally, handing Itachi two more shopping bags without taking her eyes off her sister._ Great idea, burden down the person who's probably going to have to bail you out of this situation in another minute_, Itachi grumbled inwardly.

"Oh, not much," Kaede said with a pasted-on smile. "You sure seem to have made a nice find, though."

_What, the first time you see your S-rank criminal sister in how many years and that's the first thing you say?_

"Maybe I'll take him."

_Yes, anything to get out of...wait, what?!_

[A/N: Sorry this chapter is a little on the short side! The next chapter, which will probably be a lot longer, should end this arc.]


	16. In Which Itachi is a Prize

[Look, it's In Which Deidara's annual update XD...ah, I'm such a fail...]

Chapter 16: In Which Itachi is a Prize

"Hikari, what is your sister talking about?" Itachi enquired, but by this point Hikari was far too focused on her sister to pay any attention to what he was saying.

"Nee-san, that's not fair!" Hikari shouted, stomping one petite foot and glaring at her sister.

"You're both of you missing-nin, you hardly get a say on what's fair," Kaede retorted, looking scornfully down at Hikari as she shifted her weight into a battle-ready stance.

"Hikari, please explain what is going on," Itachi interjected, only to be yet again ignored.

"Just because you haven't had any luck doesn't mean you can steal somebody else's boyfriend!" Hikari snapped, coincidentally (and horrifyingly) answering Itachi's question. "Besides, we got a ring and everything!" she added, proudly brandishing her hand and the shining opal ring on it. "It's official!"

"You're one to talk about official," Kaede snorted. "It's your fault anyway. If you hadn't been so selfish and run off instead of taking the husband Mother found for you, I wouldn't be forced to do this!"

"How does me not wanting to marry the Icha-Icha Paradise fan of the century keep you from getting married?" Hikari said, sounding honestly confused.

"You ruined our family's reputation! Nobody wants to make a marriage contract with someone whose sister broke hers."

"Well," the anger in Hikari's voice wavered a little as she replied, "I'm sorry, Nee-san. But I'm not going to hand over Itachi just because you want him!"

The section of the market where Itachi and the two Deidara girls were had already been clearing out due to the fight that was clearly imminent between Hikari and Kaede. After Itachi's name was mentioned, almost everyone else vanished. Itachi decided this would be a good time to leave, before Konoha decided to evict them.

"Hikari, let's go," he said, shifting a few bags so he could grab her hand.

"No, I have to settle this!" Hikari insisted, snatching her hand away.

"Yes, do stay out of this, it really doesn't concern you," Kaede added.

Itachi blinked in surprise—he'd thought his vision was going, not his hearing. "I'm sorry, but I was under the impression you were in the process of trying to steal me away from my fiancee so you could marry me yourself. _In what reality does that not concern me?!_"

…

With their midday patrol of the area of the city where most of the foreign guests attending the Chuunin Exams were staying done, Kakashi and Anko headed for the market street to acquire a well-earned late lunch. However, as they neared the approach to the market, the crowds of people leaving became dense enough that they had to take to the rooftops again if they wanted to make it in.

"I don't get it, usually it's the opposite at this time of day," Anko said as they bounded over an apartment complex to get a look into the market.

Kakashi paused as he sensed the only chakra remaining in the street, and realized what was about to happen even before he reached the overlook. "This is going to be bad."

"I agree," Anko said, looking down at the scene below.

Deidara Hikari, notorious missing-nin, and her currently (but not guaranteed to remain so) upstanding sister Kaede were facing off next to a booth full of fruit. Uchiha Itachi was standing a short distance behind Hikari, burdened down by shopping bags that combined probably weighed half again as much as he did. Even so, he looked like he wasn't far from joining the fight.

Due to the acoustics of the street, Kakashi and Anko could hear what was going on below clearly, and stared at each other in shock as they realized what was happening. "Is she seriously—?" Anko said.

"It looks like it, and the Hokage's going to blame us if half the town gets destroyed in the process."

Down below, Itachi made another attempt to pull Hikari away from her sister.

"Let me handle this!" Hikari shouted, turning on him and in the process leaving her back open to Kaede for a few seconds.

Kaede did not waste those seconds. Assuming a grounded stance, she snatched Hikari's ponytail as it flicked in her direction, then swung, the chakra-boosted movement sending Hikari hurtling out of the market street on a trajectory for the restaurant square.

Calling on a clay bird construct, Kaede followed after her sister. Itachi sighed, dropped the shopping bags, and took a rooftop route in the same direction.

…

"Somebody's got to do something about poor Iruka-sensei's class, this was the fourth time this week he came in with an 'accidental kunai wound,'" Sakura declared, tossing a few crumbs from her roll to a cluster of pigeons gathered near her and Ino's outdoor table.

"Hey, don't waste that!" Ino warned. "The service is really slow here, that appetizer might be all we get for a while."

"I'm not wasting it, I like—"

Sakura never got to finish her sentence, or feed the pigeons anymore, because at that moment a blonde shockwave struck the table. Being ninjas, Ino and Sakura were both able to jump away without injury, but Sakura's tea was not so lucky and ended up being spilled all over her dress.

"Ow," said the party responsible for the mayhem, sitting dazedly amidst the wreckage. "When Nee-san wants something, she doesn't go by halves…"

"Are you okay?" Ino said, holding out her hand to help the girl up.

"I've had worse," the—strangely familiar-looking to Sakura— intruder said as she accepted Ino's assistance. "I think. Have I? I must have hit my head pretty hard. Say, have either of you got any hairpins?"

"Sure, I think I've got some…" Sakura said, digging into her belt pouch. "Here they are!" As she handed them over, she got a better look at the girl's face and remembered where they had met before. "Akatsuki!" she gasped, jerking her hand back.

"Oh hey, it's the pink bridesmaid!" Deidara exclaimed. "I thought I knew you from somewhere. Not your friend, though. Hello, pink bridesmaid's friend, sorry to be rude but I'm in a little bit of a hurry," she continued as a shadow flashed over the street. "Do I not get the pins anymore?"

"Fine, here." Sakura relinquished the pins, then pulled Ino inside the restaurant to watch what was about to go down.

…

"'Let's help my sister win the Chuunin Exams,' she said. 'It'll be fun.' She could have mentioned the bit about the grudge and the fiancee-stealing, but no! I had to find that out myself!"

Itachi realized that he had been ranting a little too loudly when Kakashi landed on the roof he had chosen to overlook the fight Hikari and her sister were in the process of having.

"Bad day?" Kakashi said. It was a testament to how far Itachi's reputation had fallen since the Chuunin Exams began that Kakashi even dared to approach, let alone speak to him.

"Shut up before I decide you're making it worse."

Not only did Kakashi not take this advice, he perched on a railing only a few feet away from Itachi's vantage point. While Itachi didn't want to start a conversation at the moment, he figured he might as well take advantage of the Jounin's presence if he was stuck with him. "Did you know about all this when you got engaged to her?" he asked, gesturing towards the square where Hikari had just finished dodging Kaede's bombs long enough to pin her hair up and now appeared to be preparing to go on the attack.

"She was, like, three years old, so no, not for her specifically. The clan does have quite the reputation though, what with that thing with Minato and all…" Kakashi paused when Itachi raised his eyebrows. "Did you seriously not know about that before getting into this? Oh wow, I'm sorry kid."

Itachi sighed. "It looks like we'll be here for a while—" Hikari had just snatched a tomato from a small fruit stand and flung it at her sister "—so if you don't want me to stab you for saying I was a kid just now, I would like to know your history with the Deidara clan." Some memory of the training in manners he had received from his mother chose to resurface at this point, so he tacked on a "please" for good measure, but pulled out a kunai to make sure Kakashi knew he was serious about the stabbing.

"I feel like I should point out that if you were a civilian, you'd still be considered a minor, but whatever. Where do you want me to start?" Kakashi asked.

"Minato," Itachi replied, ducking slightly to avoid some stray blueberries. The two girls had reformed their birds into smaller gliders and were now chasing each other around the square with clay-wrapped fruit grenades.


End file.
